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How to merge Hyperlinks
You can merge hyperlink destinations as well as text.
If you include a fieldname in a hyperlink URL, Merge will merge the matching data from your data file into it at merge time.
For example:
In your PowerPoint merge template file, draw a rectangle, right-click it and choose Add Hyperlink.
In the Hyperlink field, type
:hyperlink1:
In the matching data file, include a column of data with :hyperlink1: in the first row. Beneath it, add the various destinations you want to link to. It might look like this:
:hyperlink1: http://www.pptools.com/merge/ mailto:somebody@test.com #-1,-1,NEXT #-1,-1,FIRST # 258,3,Merge is cool
After merging, here's what each of those links will do:
- The first will give you a link that takes you to this site's home page.
- The second, when clicked, will start a new email message.
- The third will take you to the next slide in the presentation.
- The fourth will take you to the first slide in the presentation.
- The fifth will take you to slide 3, titled "Merge is cool" (see below for more info on this)
What about those weird links that start with #?
These are PowerPoint hyperlink "subaddresses" ... it's how PowerPoint represents internal links to other slides.
- The first number is the slide id number of the slide you want to link to.
- The second is the slide index of the slide you want to link to.
- The last bit is the title of the slide you want to link to.
You can leave some of these blank if you like. These are functionally alike:
- # 258,3,Merge is cool
- # ,3,
- # 258,,
If you need to know the exact info to use in the links, download and install our free FixLinks demo. The FixLinks link reporting tool supplies a lot of useful information when you run it on a presentation that already contains links of the type you want to create by merging.
One other hint: to enter these oddball # links in Excel, you'll need to type a ' (apostrophe) first, then the link information, so that Excel knows it's a string and not a formula.
Example file
Download an example Merge PowerPoint template file and accompanying Excel data file here. (MergingHyperlinks.zip, 13kb)
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