Heading Off Linking Problems

Nothing is as frustrating as when PowerPoint refuses to locate that linked narration or video, especially if this debacle happens in full view of an audience.

You can avoid link problems altogether by doing some housekeeping. The secret is to stop thinking of your presentations as mere .pptx files. Instead, start thinking of them as folders. Before you start to create a new presentation, just follow these steps:

1. Create an empty folder and then create a single-slide presentation and save it to this folder.
2. Copy all the sound and video files you want to insert in the presentation to this folder.
   Copy all the other documents you want to hyperlink from the presentation, such as other PowerPoint presentations, Word and PDF documents, and Excel spreadsheets.
3. After you finish copying these files into the same folder as the presentation, create your presentation and start inserting or linking to the files within the presentation.
4. If you want to link another sound, video, or document, copy it to the folder first and then insert it.
5. If you want to move the presentation to another computer, copy the entire folder (not just the presentation), and PowerPoint will have no problems finding those linked files!