Control the formatting of hyperlinked text

When you add a hyperlink to text in PowerPoint, you'll notice that PowerPoint reformats the text in several ways:

• The color of the linked text changes
• The linked text gets an underline

If you view your presentation as a slide show and click one of these links, then return to the slide, you'll notice that the color of "visited" links has also changed. Suppose you don't want PowerPoint to reformat your text this way? You have several options.

Don't hyperlink to text

Use text in an AutoShape rather than plain text, and apply your hyperlink to the AutoShape instead of to the text

• Instead of adding a text block, add a rectangle instead. Note that you can use other autoshapes instead of rectangles if you like.
• With the rectangle selected, start typing your text. PowerPoint will center it in the rectangle.
• Format the text to taste.
• Rightclick the rectangle and choose Hyperlink and add the hyperlink as you would normally.
• Optionally, apply No Fill and No Outline to the shape if you want only the text to be visible. That'd be text that's formatted your way, not PowerPoint's way.

But what if you're stuck using hyperlinks in regular old text blocks? Read on ...

Changing the link colors

You can change the colors PowerPoint automatically assigns to links and visited links if you like.

STOP A MINUTE

The rest of this involves working with PowerPoint's color schemes. While you can get through what needs to be done with just these instructions, do yourself a favor: Pay a visit to PowerPoint MVP Echo Swinford's Color Schemes Tutorial first. It'll help you understand what the rest of this is all about. Go on. Scoot! We'll wait right here 'til you get back.

OK.
In PowerPoint 2007:

• Choose Design tab | Colors | Create New Theme Colors
• Click the Hyperlink color and choose More Colors.
• Input RGB values (or select from the color honeycomb) and click OK.
• Click the Followed Hyperlink color and choose More Colors
• Input RGB values (or select from the color honeycomb) and click OK.
• Name your color scheme
• Click Save

The color scheme now shows up on Design tab | Colors in the Custom section. If you need to edit it further, right-click the scheme and choose Edit.

Apply the scheme to your slides by right-clicking the color scheme in Design tab | Colors and choosing Apply to All Slides or Apply to Selected Slides.

In PowerPoint 2002 and 2003:

• If you don't already see the Slide Design task pane, choose Format, Slide Design from the main menu bar.
• In the Slide Design pane, click Color Schemes. "Apply a color scheme:" appears at the top of the area where thumbnails appear.
• Click "Edit Color Schemes ..." at the bottom of the task pane. The "Edit Color Scheme" dialog box appears.
• Click the Custom tab
• On the Custom tab, you'll see 8 "color chips". These are the scheme colors. The last two, "Accent and hyperlink" and "Accent and followed hyperlink" are the ones you're interested in.
• Doubleclick the "Accent and hyperlink" color chip and choose a new Standard or Custom color in the color selection dialog box that appears, then click OK. This sets the color that PowerPoint assigns to hyperlinked text.
• Repeat for the "Accent and followed hyperlink" color chip if you wish to set the color PowerPoint uses for visited hyperlinked text.
• Click "Apply" to apply this change to ALL of your slides, unlike PPT 97/2000, which let you change just the current slide. Approach with caution, and remember: Edit, Undo is your Friend.

A workaround: Note that when you edit a color scheme, it creates a new scheme in the task pane. If you want to apply a scheme to only a few slides, do it as above, then reapply the original color scheme to the slides you didn't want to change. Or better yet, just create a new master for the slides with the links and apply that. Echo ... you remember Echo, right? ... did this tutorial on creating multiple templates and using them to apply special color schemes to individual slides

Note: Changing the "Accent and hyperlink" color changes both hyperlinks AND the color of any shapes that you've assigned the scheme's second Accent color to. Likewise, changing "Accent and followed hyperlink" changes the color of followed hyperlinks AND colors with the third Accent color. If you don't want your other shapes to change color when you change link colors, assign the shapes colors from the More Fill Colors selections, not Scheme colors.

In PowerPoint 97 and 2000:

• From the main menu bar, choose Format, Slide Color Scheme
• In the Color Scheme dialog box, click the Custom tab
• On the Custom tab, you'll see 8 "color chips". These are the scheme colors. The last two, "Accent and hyperlink" and "Accent and followed hyperlink" are the ones you're interested in.
• Doubleclick the "Accent and hyperlink" color chip and choose a new Standard or Custom color in the color selection dialog box that appears, then click OK. This sets the color that PowerPoint assigns to hyperlinked text.
• Repeat for the "Accent and followed hyperlink" color chip if you wish to set the color PowerPoint uses for visited hyperlinked text.
• Click "Apply" to apply this change to only the current slide or click "Apply to All" to apply the change to your entire presentation.

Underlines on hyperlinked text

Unfortunately, you can't get rid of the underline that PowerPoint automatically applies to hyperlinked text, but there's a workaround:

• Don't add the hyperlink to the text itself.
• Instead, draw a rectangle (or other shape) that surrounds the text you want to add a link to.
• Add the hyperlink to the rectangle.
• Give the rectangle no outline and no fill to make it invisible.

The rectangle, even though invisible, will still trigger the hyperlink when you click it during a slide show (except in PowerPoint Viewer 2003, where as of November 2003, a bug prevents invisible objects from triggering hyperlinks.)

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