4 typical questions about inserting music to PowerPoint

Sunnyme · 09-09-2008

As a PowerPoint expert, I often receive a lot of PowerPoint question about sound. Here I pick out four typical questions and supply a solution for each question. Hope it helps you at the process of creating PowerPoint presentation.

All the solutions below is taking PowerPoint 2007 for example. PowerPoint 2003 is similar with it.

Question 1 – How to insert multiple music to PowerPoint?

Solution:
Steps: Insert a Sound File ( let the sound play through slide 5 to slide 8, assume that the presentation has 20 slides.)
1. At slide 5, click insert -> sound -> sound from file. Select the music you want to insert;
2. In the succeeding dialog box which say “How do you want the sound to start in the slide show, please select “Automatically”.
3. In the ribbon, click Animation -> Custom Animation.
4. In the Custom Animation task pane, click the arrow on the selected item in the Custom Animation list, and then click Effect Options.
5. On the Effect tab, under Stop playing, click After * slides, and then input 8 to the box.
On the Timing tab, at the Repeat item, please select End of slide.
After this the sound file can play through slide 5 to slide 8. If you want to add other sound to it, do the same to other sound files.

Question 2 -- How can I put a song into PowerPoint and have it play automatically throughout the show?

Solution:
1. At slide 1, click insert -> sound -> sound from file. Select the music you want to insert;
2. In the succeeding dialog box which say “How do you want the sound to start in the slide show, please select “Automatically”.
3. Click on the sound icon on the slide. The ribbon should change to the contextual menu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context_menu) for sound. If the ribbon does not change, click on the Sound Tools link above the ribbon. Select "Loop Until Stopped” at the "Sound Option" above the slide, at the same time, in the “Play Sound” item, select “play across slide”.
After you have done the three steps above, the music you desired can be played all over the slides.

Question 3 -- Why can't get the sound to play when emailing PowerPoint? Why my PowerPoint music won't play on another computer, but it will play on my computer?

Reason:
Sound files in wav format larger than 100 KB (i.e. anything but a short sound effect) and other file formats are linked to PowerPoint presentation, when you show the presentation to other place such as other computer or Email the presentation, the linked music will not be shown.
The difference between embed and link, please view:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/po...303071033.aspx

solution:
1. Put the sound and the presentation file in a same folder.
2. Reinsert the sound file to PowerPoint
3. Send the whole folder to other computers or zip the folder and send via email.

Question 4 -- How to embed the sound files in PowerPoint presentation? Which format should I use?

Music of each format can be embedded in PowerPoint.
Solution:
To wav sound larger than 100KB：
Enlarge the default file size limit.
Office button -> PowerPoint options -> Advanced -> Save -> link sounds with file size greater than KB, input 50000.
To MP3 or other formats：
Try to convert your presentation to Flash use some third party presentation tools. These can help you create Flash-based presentation with all the original effects retained. Such as Wondershare PPT2Flash Standard , it's an add-in of PowerPoint, which can convert PowerPoint to Flash with one click.