How to activate URL Links in Slideshare
12 April 2010 · Leave a comment »
Sometimes presentations include URL links. URL stands for Universal Resource Locator and is an internet term. It generally refers to a website address such as http://www.slidecoaching.com. If you build a presentation with PowerPoint, the URL link will automatically get underlined, it will appear in a different color and it will be active when you show the presentation with PowerPoint; when you click on it the browser will open and the webpage will be displayed. A link which is recognized as a URL by PowerPoint will also be recognized as such when you upload your presentation to Slideshare, the popular site for presentation sharing. On Slideshare the URL will lose the underlining, which may make you believe the link is not active, but when you move the mouse pointer over it a hand will appear to show you it’s an active hyperlink.
The actual text displayed does not need to be the exact URL, it can be anything you want, even multiple words, and generally the http prefix is taken away for aesthetic reasons. But if the hyperlink is active and functioning in PowerPoint, it will also be active in Slideshare. Remember that just typing a website address such as lesswire.it in one of your presentation slides will not necessarily turn it into a hyperlink. PowerPoint does not know you want a hyperlink unless it sees the http prefix or it can intepret a www prefix. But you can add the hyperlink yourself to any text by first selecting it and then using the Insert / Hyperlink command.
The same method can be applied to a PowerPoint object, like a rectangle or an image. Just select the object and use the Insert/Hyperlink command. This can be useful to place icons with links to your Twitter, Facebook and other social network pages.
Here are a couple of very simple example slides posted to Slideshare. You can move your mouse pointer to see which pieces of text and which objects have a hyperlink attached, and you can test the links by clicking on them. The third page has sample social network icons with links, a great idea for the first or last slide of a presentation deck.
