Powerful PowerPoint for Educators: Using Visual Basic for Applications to Make PowerPoint Interactive

Figure 2.10. The Twelve Types of Buttons
The but ton icons do not have to cor respond to the ac tion the but ton will per -
form, but good rules of design dictate that the icon should make sense for what is 
going to hap pen when the but ton is pressed.
Once you se lect a but ton (from the flyout menu from “Ac tion But tons”),
your cur sor will change to a plus sign. You can either click on your slide and a
standard size but ton will ap pear, or you can drag the mouse to create a but ton of
But tons 25

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any size you like. Don’t worry if the size isn’t per fect; you can al ways click on
the but ton and drag it from the handles to change the size.
Once you create the but ton, you will be prompted with the di alog box
shown in Fig ure 2.11.
Figure 2.11. Ac tion Set tings for a But ton
This dialog box al lows you to have your but ton do many of the same things you
could do with a hyperlink. Unfortunately, the same things are done in a slightly
dif fer ent way.
To link to another slide, you will choose “Hyperlink to” and pick from the
drop-down menu. If you chose an icon for your button, “Hyperlink to” might al -
ready be cho sen with PowerPoint’s best guess for what you want to do. If
PowerPoint guessed cor rectly, just click OK; oth erwise pick something else.
Like the hyperlinks for text, you can choose “Next Slide,” “Pre 
vi 
ous
Slide,” “First Slide,” “Last Slide,” and “Cus tom Show.” You can also choose a
specific slide by choosing “Slide . . . ,” which will prompt you for the slide to link 
to.
In ad dition to the choices that were available for hyperlinks for text, you
can also choose “Last Slide Viewed,” which takes you to the slide that took you
to the current slide. Imagine a quiz with several questions. Each wrong answer
leads to a slide with the word “Wrong” (or some more gen tle reminder that the
26 Tra di tional Mul ti me dia Fea tures of PowerPoint

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incorrect an swer was cho sen) on it. The “Wrong” slide can contain a but ton that
returns to the last slide viewed, so it al ways re turns to the ques tion that was just
answered, no matter which question that is. An other additional op tion is “End
Show,” which will quit out of Slide Show View.
The “URL . . . ” choice will allow you to type in a Web address, but it does
not give you the op tion to browse for a Web ad dress. “Other PowerPoint Presen-
ta tion” not only lets you choose another PowerPoint file, but it also lets you pick
which slide in that pre sentation the but ton will go to. Fi nally, “Other File . . . ” is
just like browsing for a file when choosing “Existing File or Web Page” or
“Doc u ment” with a hypertext link.
Once you have chosen where to “Hyperlink to,” click OK. If you ever want
to change what the button does, click on the but ton to select it and choose “Ac-
tion Set tings” from the Slide Show menu.
Remember that but tons, like hyperlinks, only work in Slide Show View. If
you click on them in Edit View, you will se lect them. Clicking on them in Slide
Show View will do whatever ac tion you set the button to do.
Now that you have seen a few things that buttons can do that hyperlinks can-
not, I’ll let you in on a little secret: Any PowerPoint ob ject, in cluding text, can have
the same ac tion settings as a button. If you click on a pic ture or a shape drawn with
the Draw tools, or you high light text, you can choose “Action Settings” from the
Slide Show menu and get all the same op tions described in this section for but tons.