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Updated
7/25/2016

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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:

What about those weird links that start with #?

These are PowerPoint hyperlink "subaddresses" ... it's how PowerPoint represents internal links to other slides.

You can leave some of these blank if you like. These are functionally alike:

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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