link Archives | PowerPoint Tips Blog

Link text to an Excel cell to dynamically update data

December 26, 2014 by Ellen Finkelstein 9 Comments

Sudeep wrote me, “I need some help to update a slide containing a map with certain districts. I have the monthly sales turnover for these districts. In need to update them monthly from an Excel sheet. Can you suggest a way to automate the process without having to punch it in a text box every month?

Sudeep doesn’t want to create an entire table of data. Instead, he wants individual text boxes that appear on the map. Each one should be linked to an Excel cell.

Here’s an example of what such a slide might look like.

One solution: Copy and Paste Link

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My sound won’t play! Embed narration or music so you can send the PowerPoint presentation to others

August 5, 2012 by Ellen Finkelstein 26 Comments

A reader wants to send a PPS (a PowerPoint Show) file containing music via email but when he sends it, the viewer doesn’t hear the music. Why?

Know the difference between linked and embedded sounds

The reason is usually because the sound was linked, not embedded. When the recipient opened the PowerPoint file, the audio file was missing, so it wouldn’t play. Some audio (whether narration, music or another sound) is linked and some is embedded:

Linking means that the audio is in a file that is separate from your PowerPoint file. The PowerPoint file contains a link to the audio file.
Embedding means that the audio is within the PowerPoint file. There is no separate file.

Advantages and disadvantages of linking and embedding

You don’t always have a choice, but when you do, you should consider which option is best for your needs.

	Advantages	Disadvantages
Linking	Keeps file small; if you change the audio file, the presentation uses the updated file	Requires access to the linked file; if the audio file is missing or moved, the sound doesn’t play
Embedding	Ensures that the audio will play (usually)	Makes the PowerPoint file larger, sometimes too big to e-mail; to change the audio file in the presentation, you have to delete the link and re-link to the new file.

What determines if you can embed a sound?

In PowerPoint 2003 and 2007, you can only embed .wav (WAV) sound files. That means that MP3 and other audio files will be linked. Moreover, WAV sound files that are greater than 100 KB are automatically linked, rather than embedded. However, you can increase the size limit to up to 50,000 KB (50 MB). Here’s how to do so in PowerPoint 2003 and 2007:

PowerPoint 2003: Choose Tools> Options and click the General tab. In the Link Sounds with File Size Greater Than text box, change 100KB to any number up to 50000 KB. Click OK.
PowerPoint 2007: Choose the Office button> PowerPoint Options > Advanced. In the Save section, change the number as just described.

Note: This change is not retroactive; it doesn’t affect existing linked files. If you have a linked WAV file that you want to embed, increase the size limit, delete the audio file, and re-insert it.

In PowerPoint 2010, sounds are embedded by default, including MP3 files. This is a great feature, because sounds are now more likely to play. E-mail attachment limits are larger than they used to be, but do remember that some sounds can be very large. The good news is that MP3 sounds are compressed, so they’re significantly smaller than WAV files.

What if you want to link a file in PowerPoint 2010? That’s easily done. Choose Insert tab> Audio. In the dialog box, select your file and click the down arrow next to the Insert button. Then choose Link to File.

How do I e-mail a presentation with a sound?

Let’s say that embedding makes the presentation too big to e-mail. You could use a large file transfer service, such as YouSendIt or Dropbox. You could post the file on a web server or some other stored location, such as Amazon S3, and give people the link. These methods let recipients download the large file.

If you have a linked sound, you need to e-mail both files, the presentation and the audio file. You can zip the 2 files or use PowerPoint’s Package for CD feature; this might make the file small enough to e-mail or you can use one of the methods just discussed for transferring large files.

When you use the Package for CD feature, at least you know that all the related files are together. Here’s the procedure:

In 2003, choose File> Package for CD.
In 2007, choose Office button> Publish> Package for CD.
In 2010, choose File> Save & Send> Package Presentation for CD> Package for CD.

Then follow the instructions in the dialog box. You can burn the files to a CD or choose the Copy to Folder option, which just saves all the files in one place.

Make PowerPoint think that an MP3 is a WAV file

In most cases, you’ll get better results if you embed sounds. That’s why Microsoft changed the behavior of sounds in PowerPoint 2010. But if you have 2003 or 2007, there’s a trick you can use to make PowerPoint think that your MP3 file is a WAV file, so you can embed it (if the file is 50 MB or less). This is one of the advance techniques I cover in my e-book, 101 Advanced Techniques Every PowerPoint User Should Know. (Check it out!). You need to install some 3rd-party software.

Follow these steps:

Go to http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/?q=download and download and then install CDex.
In CDex, choose Convert> Add Riff –WAV(s) header to MP2 or MP3 file(s).
In the Open dialog box, click the ellipsis button. In the Browse for Folder dialog box, navigate to a folder, select it, and Click OK.
A list of the MP3 files in the folder appears. Select the MP3 file that you want to use, and click Convert.

CDex saves the MP3 file with a WAV filename extension in the same folder as the original. It‘s the same size, too. You can now embed it into PowerPoint.

“101 Tips Every PowerPoint User Should Know” is for everyone who never took a course or read a book about PowerPoint! These tips will fill in the gaps, speed up your work, make presentations easier, and help you get better results. Now updated through PowerPoint 2016 and Office 365. Learn more at http://ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/101-tips/

Link to a specific PowerPoint 2003, 2007 or 2010 slide from Microsoft Word or Excel

June 14, 2012 by Ellen Finkelstein 36 Comments

In another tip, “Hyperlink to a specific slide in another presentation, or specific location in another file,” one of the topics I cover is how to create a hyperlink in PowerPoint that links to a specific location in Word or Excel. I also explain that you can link to a specific slide in another PowerPoint presentation by adding the # symbol, the slide number, a period, a space and the slide’s title.

Here’s an example.

As I note in that earlier tip, hyperlinking to another file is a great way to connect content that exists in more than 1 file. You might want to put a hyperlink in a report created in Word or a spreadsheet created in Excel that sends readers to a specific slide in a PowerPoint presentation.

Link from Word or Excel to PowerPoint

Suppose you want to link from Word or Excel to Slide 2 in a PowerPoint 2003, 2007 or 2010 presentation. If you try to create such a link, Word and Excel open the presentation in Normal view, not Slide Show view.

But if you create a Slide Show file and link to that, the hyperlink works; it opens the PowerPoint file in slide show view at the desired slide. A Slide Show is just a PowerPoint file that opens in Slide Show view.

Create a Slide Show

To create a Slide Show file, follow these steps:

Choose File (or Application button)> Save As.
From the Save as Type drop-down list, choose PowerPoint Show (*.ppsx or *.pps).
Specify the location at the top of the dialog box. I recommend that the presentation and the Word or Excel file be in the same folder, in case you need to move the files to another computer; then, the link should continue to work.
Click Save.

Add the hyperlink in Word or Excel

Now you’re ready to create the hyperlink in Word or Excel. Here are the steps:

Open the PowerPoint file and note the slide number to which you want to link. If you want to include the slide title in the hyperlink for your reference, note that too. Close the file.
In Word or Excel, add a hyperlink to some text or a shape by selecting it and choosing Insert> Hyperlink.
In the Insert Hyperlink dialog box, click the Existing File or Web Page button.
Navigate to the PowerPoint Show file and select it. You’ll see it in the dialog box’s Address text box. If there are spaces in the file name, you may see %20 in place of the spaces. %20 is HTML code for a space, so just leave it.
At the end of the file name in the Address box, add a # symbol, then the slide number. An example: sample%20makeovers.ppsx#2
If you want to add the slide title, add a period, space and the slide title. Tip: In the PowerPoint file, you can click the Outline tab in the left-hand pane and copy and paste the slide title from there. My link now looks like this: sample%20makeovers.ppsx#2. Tell ‘n’ showSM
Click OK.
Test your hyperlink. PowerPoint should open in Slide Show view to the slide you specified.

Nice, yes?

Thanks to a reader for asking the question in the older tip that lead to this technique. How will you find it useful?

How to use your remote to switch to another presentation in PowerPoint 2007 & 2010

November 14, 2011 by Ellen Finkelstein 6 Comments

A friend asked me, “How can I link to another presentation and use my remote to get to that presentation?”

Here’s the problem. You can easily link any shape to another presentation by hyperlinking it. I have instructions in my tip, “Link to other presentations and return to the original presentation.”

But to activate that hyperlink, you need to actually click the shape on the screen. This means that you need to go to your laptop, move your cursor onto the shape, and click.

What if you’re not close to your laptop and are using a remote to go from slide to slide? This is a common situation when you’re in a large room or just want to move around among the audience members.

The solution is not obvious at all, so here are the steps:

Choose Insert> Object. This opens the Insert Object dialog box.
Click Create From File. Then browse to, and open, the presentation. You’ll see an image of the presentation’s first slide.
Decide if you want the image to show. If it looks good and is a good indicator to the audience of what’s to come, leave it on the slide. Otherwise, select the icon and drag it off the slide.
Open the Animation pane. In PowerPoint 2007, choose Animations tab> Custom Animation. In PowerPoint 2010, choose Animations tab> Animation Pane.You might be wondering, why the Animation pane?
The image should still be selected. In 2007, click the Add Effect button> Object Actions> Show. In 2010, choose Add Animation> OLE Action Verbs> Show and click OK.

This puts the showing of the second presentation in the animation order. So when you click your remote, that presentation is displayed in Slide Show view. You can go through it and when it ends, you’re automatically back on the slide where you started.

If you know of a way to do this in PowerPoint 2003, please leave a comment! The options in 2003 are only Open and Edit, which don’t open the presentation in Slide Show view.

Link to other presentations and return to the original presentation

August 22, 2001 by Ellen Finkelstein 19 Comments

For greater flexibility when you present, you can create a main presentation that contains a menu and link the items in the menu to other presentations. When you decide to cover a topic, you click on its menu item to go to the presentation on that topic.

When you’re done covering that topic, you click on a button to return to the menu in the main presentation. From there you can go to another topic.

You may find this method simpler than using custom shows or a Web-style presentation, which I explain in another tip.

First, create your main presentation. You can use Action Buttons for your menu, or any other PowerPoint object. Here’s my menu, which links to six presentations containing various categories of images that can be used as backgrounds:

action buttons in main menu

Then create your subsidiary presentations, if you haven’t already. (You can use existing presentations, if you want.) Here’s the “Abundance of nature” presentation:

subsidiary presentations

On the last slide of each subsidiary presentation, you’ll create a hyperlink that goes back to the menu presentation. In fact, if you want, you can link from every slide. To create the link, you can use an action button or an existing object. I don’t like to use the slide’s title (which is at the bottom in these presentations) because the text is underlined when you hyperlink it. So I created an invisible rectangle (no line, no fill) and placed it on top of the title. Then I linked that rectangle. You seem to be clicking the title, but you’re really clicking the invisible, hyperlinked rectangle.

Right-click the selected object that you want to link and choose Hyperlink to open the Action Settings dialog box. (In PowerPoint 2007 & 2010, choose Insert tab> Links> Action.) Choose the Hyperlink To option and choose End Show from the drop-down list. Click OK.

When you use the End Show option, PowerPoint automatically returns to the place where you left off in the presentation that brought you to the current presentation. Therefore, the hyperlink returns you to the menu of the main presentation.

In this example, you could also link directly to the menu’s slide, but if your main presentation has buttons on several slides, using End Show ensures that you return to the slide you left.

Finally, go back to the main menu presentation and add hyperlinks to the subsidiary presentations.