Default Behaviors for Action Buttons in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac

Once you place an Action Button on your slide in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac, you can make them do all sorts of actions when clicked. What sets Action Buttons apart from other shape types in PowerPoint is the iconography they contain. For most users, an icon such as a leftwards arrow indicates moving to the previous slide and a rightwards arrow does indicate progressing to the next slide. Another advantage of these icon-equipped Action Buttons is that they are language independent, and can work very well in multi-language and international presentations. In this tutorial you are going to explore the different types of Action Buttons, and their default behaviors.

You are already aware that Action Buttons can be found within the Shape Browser, or the Shape gallery, which can be accessed from the Home tab of the Ribbon. Figure 1 shows the Action Buttons category within the Shape gallery.

Figure 1: Action Buttons category within the Shape gallery

Action Buttons are of 12 types. These are explained below, from top left to bottom right in the Action Buttons sub-gallery as shown highlighted in red in Figure 1, above:

1. Custom: No default behavior for this Action Button type—this typically has no icon, and you can use as required.
2. 
2. Home: Moves to the first slide of the presentation.
3. 
3. Help: No default behavior for this Action Button type, typically you can use this to link to a slide that has help information, or a Q&A slide.
4. 
4. Information: No default behavior for this Action Button type, typically you can use this to link to a slide that has information, such as contact information.
5. 
5. Back or Previous: Takes you to the previous slide.
6. 
6. Forward or Next: Takes you to the next slide.
7. 
7. Beginning: Goes to the first slide of the active presentation.
8. 
8. End: Takes you directly to the last slide in the presentation, skipping all slides in between.
9. 
9. Return: When clicked, takes you to the most recently viewed slide.
10. 
10. Document: No default behavior for this Action Button type, mainly used to hyperlink to another document such as a Word document, Excel sheet, PDF, etc.
11. 
11. Sound: No default behavior for this Action Button type, typically is used to interact with a sound (audio) file.
12. 
12. Movie: No default behavior for this Action Button type, typically is used to interact with a movie (video) file.
13. 

Now that you have learned how to insert an Action Button, and what behaviors these Action Button types represent, we will explore editing hyperlinks for these Action Buttons.