Hyperlink Hijinks

Those of us who develop our courses with the Microsoft PowerPoint/Articulate Suite combo are familiar with a host of buggy little problems. Don’t get me wrong…I like the programs just fine, and, ultimately, I feel they get the job done pretty well…but sometimes it’s a frustrating ride.

I recently had a course in which I had to create a number of hyperlinks, leading from particular slides to corresponding PDF documents. Having accomplished this task once before, I thought I knew how to do it. However, once I’d published this course…all of the links were broken.

After stubbornly trying a number of tactics that I’ll loosely call “fixes,” I finally conceded failure. Once I climbed in off the ledge, I contacted a colleague who straightened it out for me. I thought that her advice would be worth sharing.

Step 1: Prepare the PDF file you plan to hyperlink by removing capital letters, and spaces from between words, in the file’s title. If this step is overlooked, the links will not function once the course is published. For example “Meditations on a Crimson Shadow.pdf” would need to be represented as “meditationsonacrimsonshadow.pfd”.

Step 2: Upload the PDF document to the “Attachments” area of the PowerPoint (located on the “Articulate” menu-tab).

Step 3: Highlight the text or object to which you will hyperlink the document and click “Hyperlink” (located on the “Insert” menu-tab).

Step 4: Browse for the appropriate PDF title from your files and select it.

Step 5: Entirely remove the displayed pathway, EXCEPT for the pdf title (e.g., “meditationsonacrimsonshadow.pfd”) and save.

Step 6: Publish.

Step 7: Open the published file’s root folder, open the “data” folder, and open the “downloads” folder. Copy the appropriate PDF file and past it into the published root file. This is a critical step. If the appropriate PDF file is not copied into the published course root folder, it will not open when the link is clicked.

Admittedly, this process may not be only one which will establish functioning hyperlinks within an Articulate course—and, maybe it’s not even the best one. However it is simple, fast, and (best of all) it works! And it never hurts to find a way to make the PowerPoint/Articulate development process a little less frustrating.