Create a Tile Menu With Hyperlinks to Slides

7/25/2019 Create a Tile Menu With Hyperlinks to Slides

1/3

6/13/2016 Create a tile menu with hyperlinks to slides PowerPoint Tips Blog

http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/create-tile-menu-hyperlinks-slides/

Create a quiz in PowerPoint Home Discover PowerPoint Mix for interactive online lessons

Create a tile menu with hyperlinks to slidesBy Ellen Finkelstein

Its often useful to create a menu for your first or second slide. Here are some scenarios:

To facilitate easy navigation to anywhere in your presentation

To allow your audience to choose the order of the content, for a non-linear, live presentation

To allow viewers to navigate through an online presentation

Use an updated interface style

A recent design trend uses tiles to create a visual menu. Youve probably seen this type of tile menu in Windows

8/8.1, but others have used it as well. This type of menu is easy to create in PowerPoint.

Heres an example.

Create the shapes

Hallmarks of this style is colorful squares and rectangles laid out in a grid. PowerPoints alignment tools make it easy.

Start by inserting a square. If you click the Rectangle shape on the Home tab and simply click on the slide, youll automatically get a square. You can then

resize it by dragging on any corner but to maintainthe perfect square shape, press and hold the Shift key as you drag. Or, you can click the Rectangle shape,press and hold the Shift key and drag the square on the slide to the size you want.

Before going any further, with the first square selected, click the Format tab and choose Shape Outline, No Outline.

Tip:To quickly fill the slide with squares, place the first square about where you want it and press Ctrl+D. Move the duplicate to the right of the square,

making sure it is perfectly aligned with itnot higher or lower. Look at PowerPoints alignment guides and youll feel the second square click into place. Then

press Ctrl + D again until you have the squares you want. Finally, select all of the squares and duplicate them in a second row. You want the vertical and

horizontal distances to be the same.

Some of the shapes will need more space, so you can turn them into rectangles that take up the space of 2 squares. Simply delete one of the squares and

drag the side handle of the remaining square until it lines up with the right side of the square above or below it. Again, you should see alignment guides to

help you. You might want to make these changes later, after you fill in the content and see how much space it needs.

Format the shapes

Fill the shapes with the colors in your theme colors. Remember that this style uses lots of bright colors. Then enter text into some of the shapes and insert

images into others.

To fill a shape with an image, select it and on the Format tab, choose Shape Fill, Picture. In the dialog box, you can insert pictures from your computer or

online sources.

Note:If you use the Bing search, youll need to check the Creative Commons license to make sure that you can comply with it. For example, you might need

commercial use and modifications allowed. But in order to legally use the image, you need to provide attribution in the form of a label on the slide. Youll need

to do that separately. If you can purchase images, I recommend 123rf.comfor over 35,000,000 legal, low-cost, high-quality images. (This is an affiliate link,

but you should know that I use 123rf when I need to buy images.)

Hyperlink the tiles
http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/create-a-quiz-powerpoint/http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/discover-powerpoint-mix-interactive-online-lessons/http://www.123rf.com/#ellenfinklhttp://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/discover-powerpoint-mix-interactive-online-lessons/http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/create-a-quiz-powerpoint/


2/3



0 Tweet

Email

Follow

Finally, hyperlink the tiles to complete the tile menu. Select a tile, and go to Insert tab, Hyperlink. Choose Place in This Document and select the slide you

want to link to. Click OK.

You can also hyperlink to other files and websites.

I cover details of creating a menu in two older posts that I think youll find helpful:

Create a visual menu

Designing a web-style, menu-based presentation

Have you used a similar technique? What was your experience? Leave a comment?

Did you find this post useful? Get my free video training, "13 techniques that will make designing your slides EASY."

Need training? Click here to find out about training to bring your presentations to the next level!

If you found this useful, please use the buttons below to share it!

Related Posts:

1. Using hyperlinks

2. Use timing, animation, or sound in a presentation with hyperlinks

3. Create invisible buttons

4. Create a looping introduction

January 26th, 2015 | Tags: menu, tile, visual menu| Category: Design principles, Hyperlinks, Shapes & text boxes, Slide layout

8 comments to Create a tile menu with hyperlinks to slides

John HathornJanuary 27, 2015 at 9:47 pm

Once youve jumped to a series of slides from the Menu Slide, you might want to have the user return to the Menu Slide so he can access

another slide series. On the last slide of any series youve jumped to, put a window (button) that says RETURN and assign a hyperlink that references the

Menu Slide. This in effect creates a Subroutine in a normal computer language like FORTRAN or C.

Ellen Finkelstein

January 28, 2015 at 9:54 am

John, of course youre right. I do mention the need to have a link to return to the menu in the older posts that I linked to. Thanks for bringing

that out.

Janet van den HeeverJanuary 29, 2015 at 4:42 am

Hello

As I do not use Powerpoint a lot presently, I still like to be up to date. This is a great opportunity to update skills and learn more.

Regards

Vishwaroop

February 3, 2015 at 12:00 am

Hi,

With newer version of powerpoints, I believe action buttons provide an easier approach for the same. As John pointed out, we can have simple return

7

Share

5

Like
http://playaroundwithppt.blogspot.com/http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/category/design/slide-layout/http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/category/design/shapes-textboxes/http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/category/design/hyperlinks/http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/category/design/design-principles/http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/tag/visual-menu/http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/tag/tile/http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/tag/menu/http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/create-a-looping-introduction/http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/create-invisible-buttons/http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/create-hyperlinks-in-a-timed-presentation/http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/using-hyperlinks/http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/presentation_training_consulting.htmlhttp://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/ppt_submit.htmlhttp://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/designing-a-web-style-presentation/http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/create-a-visual-menu/mailto:?subject=Create%20a%20tile%20menu%20with%20hyperlinks%20to%20slides&body=Create%20a%20tile%20menu%20with%20hyperlinks%20to%20slides%20-%20http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ellenfinkelstein.com%2Fpptblog%2Fcreate-tile-menu-hyperlinks-slides%2Fhttps://twitter.com/intent/tweet?original_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ellenfinkelstein.com%2Fpptblog%2Fcreate-tile-menu-hyperlinks-slides%2F&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&text=Create%20a%20tile%20menu%20with%20hyperlinks%20to%20slides%20via%20%40efinkelstein&tw_p=tweetbutton&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ellenfinkelstein.com%2Fpptblog%2Fcreate-tile-menu-hyperlinks-slides%2F


3/3



action button which is default linked to last slide viewed makes it really easy. Here is something that I wrote regarding the same:

http://playaroundwithppt.blogspot.in/2015/02/episode-4-using-action-buttons-in.html

Nice read by the way!!!Thumbs up!!!

Regards

Ellen Finkelstein


Vishwaroop,

Thats a great technique. You can also make the slide that youre going to a Custom Show and set it to return to the original slide. I write about them at

http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/add-flexibility-with-custom-shows/

JT


Hi,

Having figured out how to manually create a t-0-c in PPt, I ran across something of yours from years back mentioning a summary slide buttonwhich I

couldnt find, naturally, on PPT 2013. Then I saw someone replying to an earlier post of yours advertising a free Add In. Can you direct me to that person

or site?

Tx,

JT Barbarese

Ellen FinkelsteinFebruary 17, 2015 at 11:08 am

I did a search and found this: http://blog.momsoftco.com/2008/06/how-to-create-a-summary-slide-on-powerpoint/

It mentions something called PowerTOC. You can search for that and find several sites that offer it for $29.95.

JT


Thanks for the tip. I steered my way there, purchased the add-on, loaded it, and waited for it to load. It never did. Went back to their site,

posted a question, but I have still recd no answer from the vendor. I found nothing, btw, on the faqs indicating that it was not compatible with Office 13,

which is what Im running. So, caveat emptor.
http://blog.momsoftco.com/2008/06/how-to-create-a-summary-slide-on-powerpoint/http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/add-flexibility-with-custom-shows/http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/http://playaroundwithppt.blogspot.in/2015/02/episode-4-using-action-buttons-in.html

Documents

Create a Tile Menu With Hyperlinks to Slides