Although you can link from one presentation to
another in PowerPoint, you can essentially use the same concept to link to any other file! You can link to PDFs, Word documents, Excel sheets, video files, and anything else. The link will then open in the associated program. For example, a PDF will typically open in Adobe Acrobat or
Adobe Acrobat Reader. Word files will open in Microsoft Word. Of course, this depends on whether you have a suitable program installed on your
system!
Follow these steps to get started:
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Place your presentation and the file you want to link to within the same folder. For example, we wish to link to a PDF from our presentation, and
we placed the PDF and our PowerPoint presentation in the same folder as can be seen in Figure 1, below.
Figure 1: Place all files in the same folder
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Open the presentation you placed in the folder. Now select an anchor on any slide. An “anchor” is any slide object that you can select, as
explained in our Anatomy of a Link tutorial. As you can see in
Figure 2, we selected a basic Rectangle Shape.
Figure 2: Select your anchor
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With your shape selected, access the Insert tab of the
Ribbon. Then click the Hyperlink button as
shown highlighted in red within Figure 3, below.
Figure 3: The Hyperlink button
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You can also press the Ctrl + K keyboard shortcut instead of clicking the Hyperlink
button. Want more keyboard shortcuts? Get a copy of our
PowerPoint Keyboard Shortcuts and Sequences
e-book.
This will bring up the Insert Hyperlink dialog box that you can see in Figure 4.
Make sure you select the Existing File or Web Page option in the sidebar, as shown highlighted in
red within Figure 4.
Figure 4: Link to another file
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Next choose the Current Folder option within the Look in area, highlighted in blue
within Figure 4, above. Select the file that you want to link
to, and then click the OK button, highlighted in green.
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Now play the presentation in Slide Show view. Click the anchor to test
the hyperlink.
