Okay, what I would do is create a slide for every person. Insert their
picture and paste in their bio on that slide. Use the slide layout that has
a title + blank layout and type their name in the title placeholder. You can
format the placeholder on the master slide so you don't have to do each one
manually. Just go to View|Master|Slide Master and format it there.

Then I'd put in a slide at the front that has each person's name in its own
textbox. (You don't have to put each in its own box, but I think in the long
run it will make your life easier when it comes to aligning and adding
links.)

Select the text or the textbox, right-click, and choose Hyperlink. In that
dialog, click "place in this document" over on the left, then in the middle,
select the slide for that person. Voila!

Make sure you add a button to each of the slides so you can get back to that
menu of names. You can add this to the slide master if you want, and it will
show up on every slide -- that is best for a couple of reasons. One, it
keeps you from having to create each button individually, and two, it
doesn't use up so much "link space." To understand what I mean by that, see
Lost hyperlinks, hyperlinks link to wrong place, hyperlinks stop working
http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00401.htm

Also, don't use commas in the slide title placeholder, or you won't be able
to create hyperlinks to them. If you need commas, then you'll want to copy
the title placeholder and paste it on the slide. This copy is no longer a
placeholder, so the hyperlink doesn't care what's in it. Then drag the
original title placeholder off the edge of the slide where it won't show
during the presentation and remove the comma. If you have a lot of
classmates, you may want to do this anyway and just put the last name -- or
something equally short -- in the title placeholder so as to take up less
link space in general.

To create the autorun CD, see Make an AutoRun CD
http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00037.htm If you have PPT 2003, you're in luck,
because all you have to do is File|Package for CD, package to a folder, then
burn the contents of the folder (not the folder itself) to the CD.

Part of it, not the whole thing.  It'd let you create a single PPT slide with
"placeholders" on it that indicate where you want pictures, names, addresses and so
on.  You could then keep all the actual info in an Excel file and let the addin
automatically make a slide for each classmate, based on the info in the excel file.

It doesn't help with making CDs or creating the index, but there's a macro on
http://www.pptfaq.com that will create an index slide, I'm pretty sure.

And can a simpleton like me use it

-----------------------------------------
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ:  www.pptfaq.com
PPTools:  www.pptools.com
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