How to Add Music to a PowerPoint Presentation

Posted on January 6, 2010 at 5:18 am

Adding music to a PowerPoint presentation is a very simple process, requiring only a couple of steps to complete. Music will not only give your presentations more appeal but grab the attention of the audience as well.

For this tutorial, we will be using Microsoft PowerPoint 2007, Windows Edition. If you do not have PowerPoint 2007, you can download free 60-day trial here.

After you are all ready to go with PowerPoint, go ahead and launch it from the start menu or by double click the PowerPoint icon on your desktop. If you are starting a new project, type a title in for your presentation. If you want to add music to an existing presentation, open it by clicking the office button than open.

Next, you will need to make sure that you have an audio file ready to sync with your presentation.

Click the Insert tab located along the top PowerPoint toolbar. This should bring up several insert options for your presentation. Locate the Sound icon, located on the far right of the lower toolbar, and click the arrow near it to bring down the sub menu.

From here, you will notice the options: Sound from file, Sound from clip organizer, Play CD audio track, and Record sound. You can choose whichever option that you would like. For this presentation, we will be using the Sound from file option.

The next step will be somewhat different, depending on which option you choose. However, it’s very simple and only requires you to find or create your audio file. For this tutorial, we chose to use the Sound from file option. So, we will need to navigate to our audio file and click the OK button.

The next step will automatically bring up a prompt window asking you how you want the sound to start in the slide show. There are only two options: automatically, or when clicked. For this tutorial, we will use when clicked.

There should now be a small speaker icon located somewhere on your current slide. Double click on the speaker icon, and your music should start playing. If you selected the option to play the sound automatically, you can test to see if your music is working by previewing the slide show.

To do this, click the Slide Show tab located on the top PowerPoint toolbar and click the From Current Slide icon. After you are done testing your music, you can hit the esc key to exit the slide show.

That’s all there is to it. You should have now easily added sound to your PowerPoint presentation.

» Filed Under MS Office Tips

Comments

6 Responses to “How to Add Music to a PowerPoint Presentation”

Reginaldo said on : January 6th, 2010 at 5:54 am

Ok, so what can I do if I want to send this presentation to someone else via e-mail? Do I have to send the audio file attached, too?

rafi said on : January 6th, 2010 at 10:22 am

This will be useful for me when I make a PowerPoint presentation! Thanks

Andy said on : January 6th, 2010 at 3:58 pm

@Reginaldo- If you just link music to your presentation as described above you will need to send the audio file along with the PPT. A good way to do this is by creating a folder and putting both the presentation and audio in it. The other option is to embed the sound file into your PPT, this will take a bit more work but is worth it. Here’s some more info on that: http://office.microsoft.com/en.....1956281033

Cheers,
Andy
MSFT Office Outreach

Jason S said on : January 7th, 2010 at 3:13 pm

@Andy, thanks for that info! I also wanted to know how to send a presentation to someone else that included audio. I’m guessing we would also follow the same procedur for video correct? Thanks.

Andy said on : January 13th, 2010 at 6:40 pm

@Jason S Sorry for the slow response. I’m a little unclear on your question. Are you trying to figure out how to embed videos in presentations? If so try this link: http://movies.newsm8.com/make-.....-pictures/

You should do a test email to another computer to make sure the embedded video plays. If you can guarantee internet access for the recipient then you can embed the video in your presentation that will get the content from the internet. This process is detailed in the link above also.

Cheers,
Andy
MSFT Office Outreach

Demitry said on : March 6th, 2010 at 12:09 am

Excellent post, but how can I add music that is on a CD into a Powerpoint presentation? Also, you didn’t mention which types of audio files are supported? AAC, MP3, OGG?