PPT Breadcrumb: Create and customize for a deck

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Written by Romain | Updated

Breadcrumb allows you to add a visual reminder of where you are in a presentation. Adding a Breadcrumb is useful to help know where you are within a presentation and allows your end users of the presentation/PDF click to navigate the document.

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N.B. Adding and customizing a Breadcrumb is available to all UpSlide users. We've added the instructions for administrators to reflect the relative complexity it involves. 

Overview

You will create some slide master elements and tag them so UpSlide recognizes them as shapes to use for the breadcrumb. These shapes will be used to set the positioning, formatting and sizing. This means you can customize the breadcrumb on a presentation-by-presentation basis such as creating more/less complex versions in different formats.

Skip some steps
We have a tool designed to help you build a breadcrumb by automating some of the steps written in this article. You can download the helper from here. Your IT may block the download so the instructions below show you every step.

Set your slide master

Adding the master layout

  1. Open an UpSlide compatible template. 
  2. Within the UpSlide Table of Content master create a new layout
  3. Rename the layout to UpSlide Breadcrumb

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Creating the base style and formatting

Within the breadcrumb you should create two shapes:

  1. One which contains the formatting of non-current (sub)section AND the position (vertical and horizontal) of the whole breadcrumb.
  2. The second which contains the formatting only for the current (sub)section

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The distance between the breadcrumbs is determined by the gap between the non-current and current shape (blue arrow in the example). The green arrows are showing the positioning set by the non-current shape.

Tip
First build your non-current shape on the furthest left you will want the breadcrumb. Then create your current shape to the right.
Important
The positioning (location) of your non-current shape will be what determines the positioning for the whole breadcrumb. I.E. it will determine the top left location of where the breadcrumb starts.

Assigning the formatted shapes into the engine

You now need to rename the two shapes in the PPT selection pane.

  1. Open the selection pane
  2. Select one shape at a time and name as either Current Section or Other Sections

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Checking how your breadcrumb looks and functions

  1. Close the slide master and press TOC refresh (no need to close PPT)
  2. All the breadcrumbs are refreshed in full everytime. So don’t try and manually (re)format one on a slide!
  3. In the example above we included a static Agenda one in the client slide master and hyperlinked it to the default Contents page in the template.

Stopping it appearing on some layouts

The breadcrumb will not appear on UpSlide automated section dividers. You will have other layouts you do not want the breadcrumb to appear on. You can’t control it per ‘slide’ but can control it by layout used.

  1. Create a shape such as a box in the slide layout within the master and name it UpSlide Options.
  2. Right click the option and Edit Alt Text and insert: {"NoBreadcrumb": true}
  3. We recommend you hide this shape within the Selection Pane

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Forcing only section names to appear (and not include subsection names)

If you include subsections anywhere in your presentation then the breadcrumb on every slide throughout the presentation will only show subsections of the existing section. In sections which do not include subsections no breadcrumb would appear.

You can change this setting so only sections appear in the breadcrumb and they will appear on every slide even in sections which do contain subsections. To do this add Alt Text to the non-current shape in the slide master: { "DisplayMode" : "SectionsOnly" }

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Tip
In our example the non-current shape is the pale pink arrow on the left side.

Setting a maximum width of breadcrumb

If you sometimes have very long section names you may want to add a maximum limit to how wide each reminder appears. You can apply an option within the slide master to do this by adding Alt Text to the non-current shape in the slide master: { "TrimTitles" : "True" }. The max. width of the breadcrumbs will be the width of the non-current shape set in the slide master. If you are using the SectionsOnly code from earlier in this page the format is:  { "DisplayMode" : "SectionsOnly" , "TrimTitles" : "True" }.

Tips for creating shapes with good formatting

  • Tick resize shape to fit text
  • Add in margins e.g. for the example see right.
  • Make sure the text is aligned to the left or right. Middle align + resize shape to fit text = usually overlaps and looks ugly
  • Do not assign “wrap text in shape” because otherwise long names will cause a vertical increase in the shape. Having it unticked causes a horizontal (widening) which is usually the desired results

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Depending on the shapes you use, you may want a nice 'start' to the breadcrumb in a different shape. You can do this by adding the first shape in to your presentation slide master (not the TOC master) and naming and formatting as you want. Then, give your breadcrumb shapes enough margin so they flow after it. See below:

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