How to Insert an Interactive Action Button in Microsoft PowerPoint

When presenting a slide deck to an audience, you typically move through the presentation in a strict, linear fashion—from slide 1 to slide 2, to slide 3, and so on. However, if you are designing a presentation that will be operated by the viewer (like a kiosk display, an interactive training module, or a branched quiz), you need a way for the user to navigate the slides out of order. Microsoft PowerPoint allows you to achieve this by inserting Action Buttons, which are clickable icons programmed to jump to specific slides or launch external files.

How to Insert an Action Button

PowerPoint includes a set of pre-designed Action Buttons (like “Next,” “Previous,” “Home,” and “Information”) that have standard icons built right in.

1. Open your presentation and navigate to the slide where you want the button to appear.
2. Click on the Insert tab on the top ribbon menu.
3. In the “Illustrations” group, click on Shapes.
4. Scroll all the way down to the very bottom of the Shapes menu until you see the section labeled Action Buttons.
5. Click on the button you want to use (e.g., the house icon for “Home”).
6. Your cursor will turn into a crosshair. Click and drag on your slide to draw the button at your desired size.

Programming the Action Setting

As soon as you release your mouse button after drawing the shape, PowerPoint will automatically open the Action Settings dialog box. This is where you tell the button what to do when clicked.

1. Make sure you are on the Mouse Click tab.
2. Select the Hyperlink to: radio button.
3. Click the dropdown menu below it to choose the button’s destination. You can choose standard options like Next Slide or First Slide.
4. If you want to jump to a specific, out-of-order slide (like jumping from Slide 2 to Slide 15), select Slide… from the dropdown menu, click on the exact slide title in the popup window, and click OK.
5. (Optional) If you want the button to make a noise when clicked, check the Play sound box at the bottom and choose a sound effect.
6. Click OK to save the programming.

You can now test your new button by entering Slide Show mode (press F5 or click the Slide Show icon). The button will be fully interactive, and clicking it will instantly execute the programmed action.