Creating an Interactive PowerPoint Quiz

In this tutorial, you will build an interactive quiz in PowerPoint. PowerPoint quizes can be used for review sessions, or as a self-assessment for students.

Creating the Presentation

1. Open PowerPoint to create a new presentation. If PowerPoint does not automatically create a new presentation when you open the application, refer to step 2.
2. For Office 2003 users, select Create a new presentation from the task pane on the right, then select Blank Presentation. For all other versions, select File » New to open the right task pane. In the task pane, select Blank Presentation.
3. Start with the default title slide. Give this slide a title and subtitle.
4. You can change the background colors and add clip art to make your quiz more visually appealing, or add sound effects and music to add some spice to the presentation. To do this, follow steps 5 - 7; otherwise skip to step 8.
5. Create a background for your slides by selecting Insert » Picture » Clip Art. Find a clip art picture you like and insert it into the slide. Right-click on the picture and select Save as Picture. Save the picture to a location you will remember, then delete it from the slide.
6. With the slide selected, choose Format » Background (if you do not see Background, click on the arrow to expand the drop-down menu). From the drop-down box, select Fill Effects and click on the Picture tab at the top. Click Select Picture, then browse to where you saved the picture. Double-click the picture. Click OK, then Apply.
7. To add sound to your presentation, select Insert from the drop-down menu and click Movies and Sounds » Sound from Clip Organizer. Search for an appropriate sound (you may need to click the Modify button to display the search field). In the "Results should be" dialog box, make sure Sounds is selected.

8. To create the first question slide, click New Slide in the main toolbar. The default layout for this slide has a title text-box and a bulleted text-box. Type your question in the title text-box, then type the answer choices in the bulleted text-box.
9. Now you are ready to create a Correct Answer slide to accompany the question slide you created in step 8. Create this slide the same way you did the question slide. For the title, type the word Correct. For the text, explain the correct answer.
   Note: Having a unique Correct Answer page for each question allows you to add additional information as an explanation.
10. Click New Slide to create a Wrong Answer slide. For the title, type Incorrect!. For the text, type Try Again!. The same Wrong Answer slide will be used for every question.
11. Repeat steps 8 and 9 for as many questions as you wish.

Action Buttons

1. Select your first question slide.
2. From the drop-down menu, select Slide Show » Action Buttons. Select the Custom button (hold your mouse over each button to view its type).
3. Your cursor should now be a plus sign. Click and drag your cursor to draw a box around your first answer choice.
4. When the Action Settings window appears, select Hyperlink to and use the drop-down field to scroll to and select Slide.... Select the slide you want to link to and click OK.

5. You should now have a box (action button) hiding the answer choice. Right-click on the action button and select Format Autoshape. While in the Colors and Lines tab, select No Fill for the color under the Fill category. Click OK.

6. Test your presentation to make sure your hyperlink works correctly.
7. Repeat these steps until all of your answer choices have been linked to the correct slides.

More Action Buttons

1. Now you will add action buttons to your Correct and Wrong answer slides so that you can navigate through the quiz.
2. Select the Wrong Answer slide. For this slide, you will need to return to the last question in order to guess again.
3. Select Slide Show » Action Buttons from the drop-down menu. This time, select the Return button.
4. Draw a large button anywhere you want on your slide. The default action for this button is Hyperlink to: Last Slide Viewed. This is what you want.
5. You may want to change the color of the action button or add text. To add text, right-click on the button and select Add Text. To change the button's color, right-click and select Format Autoshape.
6. Repeat these steps for your Correct Answer slide, but with one alteration: select the Custom button to link to the next question in the quiz as you did in the previous section on Action Buttons.

Creating Links to a Web Page

1. You may also want to have your answers link to a live Web page for more information. To do this, first highlight the text you want to create a link for.
2. Right-click on the selected text and select Hyperlink. The default link value should be Link to: Existing File or Web Page.

3. In the Address box at the bottom of the window, type in the URL (complete Web address, including http://) of the page you want your text to link to. If you open up your browser to the correct Web page, then click back to your PowerPoint presentation, the Web address should automatically be imported into this box.
4. Click OK.

Congratulations! You've now created an interactive PowerPoint presentation that you can navigate by clicking on each slide's links and buttons. View the presentation by clicking View » Slide Show and test every button and link to ensure they work properly.

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