Drag and Drop in PowerPoint
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:
- Download the presentation below (which already contains the macro)
- Add any slides that you want to make your presentation (either make them from scratch or copy them from an existing presentation)
- 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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December 24th, 2008 at 2:43 am
Many thanks! I would like a little more info. Here are two questions:
1. When closing the show you are asked to save changes. Can this option be turned off so taht the show always reverts to its original state?
2. Can you make the dragged objects only go to one particular area or be repelled if they are dragged to an “out of bounds” area?
Many thanks for showing me how to do this simple game. Lots of fun!
January 30th, 2009 at 11:10 am
I am glad the information about drag and drop is useful.
To answer your questions:
1. If you right click on the file in explorer and check the ‘Read only’ box then PowerPoint won’t let the file be saved and it will always open in it’s original state. You will be asked if you want to save your changes to a new file, but at least you won’t mess up your original by accident.
2. I don’t know of any way to force the objects into or out of a particular area with PowerPoint. I you want that sort of functionality you will need to look at using flash or if appropriate a game creator such as contentgenerator.
I hope that helps
June 4th, 2009 at 9:35 pm
This is amazing! Thanks so much for sharing, as a budding maths teacher this is exactly the kind of resource i need to keep my kids interested.
July 30th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Hi,
I am glad to hear that DragAndDrop to Powerpoint has such a great fan club.
I got many posts to increase its functionality.
You can find the original source in http://www.lemitec.de
http://www.lemitec.de/load.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6
and a Quiz-Example…
Enjoy
Hans W. Hofmann
September 24th, 2009 at 12:56 am
Thank you so much for this macro – fantastic! I was wondering if there is a way to keep the object at the back of a stack, even when dragging and dropping? I have basically made a little window on my slide and I want to move an image through the window without it appearing on top of the window when I click it.
Thanks!
August 27th, 2008 at 10:22 am
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