If you know you’ll be referring to the content of a previously-viewed slide at some point during your presentation, it might be useful to insert a link pointing back to that slide for quick access. Here’s how to set it up.

Linking to Another Slide in the Same Presentation

Open your presentation and navigate to the slide that will contain the hyperlink. Once there, highlight the text, object, shape, or image to which you want to attach the link.

Next, head over to the “Insert” tab and click the “Link” button.

In the Insert Hyperlink window that opens, select “Place in This Document” on the “Link To” list on the left.

On the right, under the “Select a place in this document” list, select the destination slide.

The four options at the top of the list let you select the first or last slide in the presentation or the slide that comes right before or after the slide containing the link.

If you need to link to a different slide, expand the “Slide Titles” category. This shows you a list of all the slides in your document. If a slide has a title, the list shows the title. If a slide does not have a title, the list shows it as something like “Slide 7.”

Click the slide to which you want to link.

A preview of the selected slide will appear in the window to the right. If you’re unsure which slide it was that you needed to link back to, this will come in handy.

Once you’re finished, click “OK” and PowerPoint will insert your link.

As a matter of good practice, double-check to make sure the link is working properly. To test the link in the regular slide editing view, Ctrl-click the linked object. To test the link when playing your presentation, you don’t have to hold the Ctrl key; just click the linked object.

If for some reason you need to remove the hyperlink, right-click the object and then select “Remove Link.”

Using the Zoom Feature

If you’re using PowerPoint for Office 365 or PowerPoint 2019, then you can take advantage of the new “Zoom” feature, which lets you seamlessly transition to any slide in the presentation by placing it inside another slide.

First, go to the slide that you’ll be linking from. Using “Normal View,” click and drag the slide you want to insert from the left-hand pane to the current slide.

Once the slide is inserted, a new “Format” tab will appear. Click it.

In the “Zoom Options” group, check the box next to “Zoom Transition.” You’re also able to specify the duration of the transition, with 01.00 being the default.

Now let’s take a look at what happens when we click that slide during our presentation.

As you can see in the above GIF, clicking the “Introduction” slide that we placed inside our “Information” transitions back to the “Introduction” slide. Clicking again brings us back to the original “Information” slide.

Neat!