This blog post covers the basics of how you can create your own functional digital notebook with clickable tabs using Microsoft Powerpoint or Google Slides. Once you know the basics, you can let your imagination run free and explore creating more complex and customised layouts, exactly how you want them! If you want to know a bit more about some useful Powerpoint functions, check out this blog post.
The instructions below are all based in Microsoft Powerpoint, though Google Slides actually has very similar functions and you should be able to follow pretty much the same steps to get similar results. There is a video at the bottom though where I run through how I make a digital notebook in Google Slides itself. Scroll to the bottom if you want to get to that straight away.
Let's create a digital notebook in Microsoft Powerpoint:
Step 1: Create a new document
Create a new presentation, then head to Design > Slide Size. Change your dimensions to your desired page size, I will create an A4 one (210mm (W) x 297mm (H))
Step 2: Change your theme
Head to View > Slide Master (View > Theme Builder in Google Slides) and change your theme, colours and fonts. This helps to ensure that your entire design is uniform.
Step 3: Turn on grid lines / guides to help you create neater layouts
Head to View and toggle on Ruler, Gridlines and Guides if you need. If you click the expand icon at the bottom of the bar, it will also open up a menu. You can turn on smart guides as well as snap objects to grid. These help you to create a neater layout.
Step 4: Create the front cover
First, we’ll create our front cover. Add in any text and design elements that you want. I’ll add in a title and some illustration elements straight from Powerpoint, the great thing about MS PPT is that they have stock images, icons and illustrations you place in straight away (Do check any licenses if you want to sell anything you create here).
Step 5: Create the tabs
Next, we’ll create our tabs. Create a new slide, then use Insert a Shape and select the rectangle shape with two rounded corners. Create your rectangle and change to your desired colour by using ‘Shape Fill’.
Select the object and start typing the text you want in your tab, this will be the first section in your notebook. I will be creating a daily planner so I will create 12 sections, one for each month.
Once you’ve got your first tab, rotate it right 90 degrees, bring it to the top right of your page. Then copy and paste it based on however many sections you have. Once you’ve lined them all up, group them and resize the height so it fits to your page.
You can then rename all your tabs accordingly and change it to the colours you want. We will come back to these tabs later.
Step 6: Create the section dividers
Create a new slide. We will now create the section dividers, the tabs will later be hyperlinked to these. I like to create dividers that are the same colour as the tabs, so I will create a background that is the same colour as the first tab then add the name of the first section. In my example it’s January.
You can then repeat step 9 for all of the sections.
Step 7: Create the planner / notebook page
Go back up to your first section divider and create a new slide. We will now create the planner page. You can create different types of layouts for your different sections but for this daily planner I’m creating, I’m only going to create one type of daily layout. You can do quick sketch on a piece of paper to get an idea of what you want to include and where before creating it in Powerpoint.
You can then use Inserts > Shapes to create boxes and lines and Insert > Text Box to add in text as needed. Leave some space on the right of the page, our tabs will be inserted on every page later on. I added in January at the top right of the layout so I have an indication of which section for each page.
You can then duplicate your layout and insert them under the different section dividers if you’re using just one layout like I am for every section. Don’t forget to change section specific information! If you’re doing different layouts, create a new slide under your other section and create your layout accordingly. Even though this is a daily planner, I won’t duplicate each planner page for the month 30 times, instead once I import this into Goodnotes for use on my iPad, I will duplicate / add a new page when needed.
Step 8: Create a contents page
Now that we’ve got all our planner pages, it’s time to create a content page then add hyperlinks to this as well as our tabs! Head to your tab page and create rectangles for each of your sections, change the colours and add in the section names.
Step 9: Add in hyperlinks
We will now add in the hyperlinks, these hyperlinks link to other pages in the document. On the right is the overview of the slides with the number of the slide next to it. This is how you will know which page to hyperlink your tabs to. Right click on your first tab and click the ‘Link’ option
A ‘Insert Hyperlink’ window will pop up. Link your first tab to the slide of your first section divider. You can see on the left in the slides overview that my first section divider for January is on slide 3, so I will click Slide 3 under ‘Select a place in this document’, then click ‘OK’.
Repeat this process for all of your tabs, then all of your content page rectangles.
Step 10: Copy and paste tabs across all pages and add a home button
Once you’ve got all your hyperlinks set, copy and paste the entire set of tabs on to all your pages. Your hyperlinks should follow the copy and pasted object, but just to check you can roll over the tabs, if it says ‘Ctrl+Click to follow link’ then you’ll know there is the hyperlink on it.
I also like to have a button on each page that brings me back to the content page, create a button for this and hyperlink it to your content page. Then copy the button onto every page.
Step 11: Export your Powerpoint as a PDF
Now all you have to do is export the Powerpoint as PDF! To do this head to File > Save as Adobe PDF.
And ta-da you’ve got your very own digital notebook! Click on the tabs to ensure the hyperlinks are working. I use Adobe Acrobat to preview my PDFs. (Check out this website for some PDF readers if you don’t already have one: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/best-free-pdf-reader) or you can bring it straight into your PDF / digital notebook app of choice (I use GoodNotes on the iPad).