Edit: When I first posted about the Drag and Drop Macro I neglected to give proper credit to and details about it’s author Hans W. Hofmann.

The code is free for personal use and you can find more details and some enhancements on Hans W. Hofmann’s website at http://test.lemitec.de/ppt/Powerpoint%20DragAndDrop.htm

Although PowerPoint is a great resource and can be used to create all sorts of resources for use in lessons, one of the problems with the way it is normally used is that it’s not very interactive.

Turning PowerPoint presentations from a linear series of slides into something that can be interacted with can be achieved using a variety of methods including hyperlinks (which I will discuss in a future post), action buttons and now drag and drop elements.

With drag and drop elements you can create interactive games and activities such as the activity matching words and their definitions in my demonstration presentation below.

This is possible using a special macro to set items within a PowerPoint presentation to be dragged and dropped. Don’t worry if you don’t know how to create macros or are not even sure what they are, the macro has been made for you and all that you need to do is:

  1. Download the presentation below (which already contains the macro)
  2. Add any slides that you want to make your presentation (either make them from scratch or copy them from an existing presentation)
  3. Delete the instruction and example slides

There are more detailed instructions within the demo presentation, which will guide you through setting up PowerPoint to allow macros to run (only needs doing once) as well as adding your slides and setting things to be dragged and dropped.

I suggest that you keep a copy of the demo presentation safe so you always have the instructions and work on a second copy when you create each new presentation. But don’t worry if you forget, you can download it again from here. When you have finished your presentation you can save it as ‘Read only’ which will mean that the bits that have been dragged around will return to where they were.

Here is the demo presentation. You can download it using the link below (the drag and drop doesn’t work in the online version).

Download drag and drop demo presentation

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