Enhance your PowerPoint Presentation by Inserting Hyperlinks

How exactly does a hyperlink enhance your already brilliant PowerPoint presentation? Say you are creating a PowerPoint presentation on the Running of the Bulls during the San Fermin festival in Pamplona, Spain. Sure you have put all the information regarding this custom in your PowerPoint slides. But wouldn’t it be great to insert a hyperlink to a website, which contained all the minutiae, in one of the slides in your presentation? Then during your slide show you can click on the hyperlink to go to the website for all the details, or to reiterate a point, then switch back and continue with your slide show presentation. It’s easy to insert a hyperlink in one, or all, of your slides - way easier than running with the bulls! Not only can you create hyperlinks to a website or to an email address, but you can also use hyperlinks in your PowerPoint presentation to connect a slide to another slide in the same presentation or use a hyperlink to connect to another presentation. Here’s how to insert a hyperlink to a website in your PowerPoint slide:

Select the text that you want to convert into a hyperlink. Then from the Insert tab, in the Links group, click on Hyperlink.

The Insert Hyperlink dialog box will appear. The text you had selected from your slide will be visible in the Text to display box. Under Link to, make sure Existing File or Web Page is selected. In the Address box, type in the address of the website that you want - make sure that the URL is typed correctly because if there is any error in the website address then the hyperlink will not work. Click OK and you are done. The text you had selected is now a hyperlink.

In Normal view, the text that is a hyperlink will now be underlined and a different color. In order to check the hyperlink, click on the Slide Show tab and then From Beginning. Once your presentation is in the slide show mode, you can click on the hyperlink which will open another window and go directly to the website you wanted.

You can select text, image, WordArt or even a shape and make it a hyperlink. Then during the slide show presentation, impress your audience by clicking on the hyperlink and jumping to a Website. In order to resume your PowerPoint presentation, just minimize or close the website and you will be back to your presentation.

To remove a hyperlink, you will have to access the Edit Hyperlink dialog box. From Normal view, click on the Insert tab and then click on Hyperlink. The Edit Hyperlink box will appear. Click on Remove Link, and then click OK. You can also right-click the hyperlink and choose Remove Hyperlink from the menu. Or right-click the hyperlink and choose Edit Hyperlink if you want to revise it. Now your text will no longer be a hyperlink.

So go ahead and insert a hyperlink in your PowerPoint presentation and change it from a run-of-the-mill presentation to a truly outstanding one!

- Rina B.