Easy way to add multiple hyperlinks in PowerPoint 2010?

This is quite easy.

Draw your shape on your slide, e.g. a Right Arrow shape, with the text "Next" on it.

Press Alt+F11 to open the VBE, then do Insert Module.

Paste in the following code:

Sub NextSlide()

    If Application.SlideShowWindows.Count > 0 Then

        SlideShowWindows(1).View.Next

    End If

End Sub

Sub PasteOnEachSlide()

    Dim sld As Slide, startingSld As Slide

    Set startingSld = ActiveWindow.View.Slide

    For Each sld In ActivePresentation.Slides

        If Not sld Is startingSld Then

            sld.Select

            ActiveWindow.View.Paste

        End If

    Next sld

    startingSld.Select

End Sub

Close the VBE and in PowerPoint select the shape.

The do Insert tab > Links group > Action

Select the Run macro option and choose NextSlide from the dropdown.  OK.

You should now be able to copy that shape and paste (Ctrl+V) it on each slide, and the macro action should still be applied.

Obviously, for this to have any point to it, you need to make your slides NOT advance on a click.  You do that via the Animations tab > Transition to this slide group > Advance slide on mouse click (uncheck).

To get that shape on to each slide you can run the macro PasteOnEachSlide via View tab Macros.  Select PasteOnEachSlide and click run.  But you must copy the shape you made (after having added the macro Action to it) using Ctrl+C first.

Hope that helps.

Cheers

Rich

David, I think you and Steve are on to something here... but I think your two ideas just need pulling together.

OK, scrap my macro idea.  I hadn't realised you can add an action to hyperlink to next slide.

I would propose the following would be most efficient:

1. Open the slide master via View tab > Master
2. Then either on the Slide Master (the first/top thumbnail in the slide thumbnails on the left), or in EACH of your Slide Layouts, add a shape and asign an action: Insert > Action > On mouse click > Hyperlink to: Next slide, OK.

If you put that on the slide master it will appear on every slide (that uses that master).  If you don't put it on the master, you need to copy it then paste it on to every Layout that is used in your presentation.  That should be significantly fewer Ctrl+V's than pasting on ~200 slides.

The drawback to this is that you wont be able to adjust the position of the next button on a specific slide (e.g. if it had contnent that would overlap it).  If you want that flexibility, copy and pasting the PasteOnEachSlide macro and running it with a shape already copied to the clipboard will be much faster than 200 x (Ctr+V, PgDn)...

Hope that helps.

Cheers

Rich

Another approach that doesn't involve vba would be to add a new layout to your presentation (a copy of an existing layout), and add your Next Silde button to the layout.  Any slides based on this layout will have the Next button.

All these ideas are reasonable, but in the time it would take to implement any of them, you could easily create a button, copy it, and paste it on 200 slides. If you have to do this kind of thing a lot, you want to explore one of the other solutions, but a click (for next slide), ctrl-v, click, ctrl-v, ... just won't take that long, especially compared to creating a macro for someone who has never done it before.

David Marcovitz

Author of Powerful PowerPoint for Educators

http://www.PowerfulPowerPoint.com/

Note you'll need to save your presentation as .pptm (macro enabled).

(also, note I updated my first post, so please check the site rather than just reading any e-mails you may have received...)

Cheers

Rich