Linking to other slides in a PowerPoint presentation

This tip is cool in that it 1) shows me something I didn’t know I could do, and 2) makes me think about different ways I could design a PowerPoint presentation. It’s possible to create hyperlinks in your PowerPoint presentation that point to other slides in the same deck.

Here’s a four slide presentation where the first slide references the following three slides… Slide A, Slide B, and Slide C:

To link to Slide A, I highlight the word or phrase that will be my hyperlink. I then click on Insert > Link. By selecting Place In This Document, I get a list of all the slides, in addition to some navigation option selections. I selected the Slide A slide, and then clicked on OK:

The phrase Slide A is now a link to the Slide A slide in the deck:

I finished up the linking by making each phrase a link to the appropriate slide:

Now when I’m showing the slides, I can use this “menu slide” to select which slide I’m going to go to next:

Voilà! I clicked on the Slide A link and was taken to that slide in the deck. I also inserted a Back To Menu link that will take me back to the original menu:

Think of this approach next time you want to give your audience a choice in terms of what direction to go in when it comes to a presentation that has a number of potential paths.