PowerPoint gives you the ability to add sound to your presentation in several different
ways. Let's take a look at our Company Overview
presentation and practice inserting sound. We'll start by inserting our own sound file.
I have some music I want to play on my title slide, while the audience is waiting for the
presentation to begin. First, I need to make sure the slide I want
to add sound to is selected, and it is. To insert sound, select the Insert tab, and
locate the Media Clips group. Click the drop-down arrow on the Sound command
and you'll see a menu of options. Select Sound from File from the menu.
The Insert Sound dialog box appears. My sound file is stored on My Desktop, so
I'll just locate it and select it. Keep in mind that PowerPoint doesn't accept
all file types. MP3 and WAV files are two common audio file
types that PowerPoint does accept. If your file isn't an accepted file type,
you can usually convert it. Once you've selected it in the dialog box,
click OK. Another dialog box appears that asks whether
you want the sound to play automatically when the slide is loaded in Slide Show View, or
whether you want the sound to start when the sound icon is clicked in the slide show.
I'll just click Automatically. Now a little sound icon appears on the slide,
and 2 new tabs appear on the Ribbon when the icon is selected.
You can click and drag the icon anywhere on the slide you wish.
If you switched to Slide Show view right now, the icon would appear on this first slide.
You probably don't want that, so luckily, we can change that setting from the Options
tab. Just click the box next to Hide During Show
in the Sound Options group. You have many other options on this tab.
You can click the Preview command to listen to the sound that will play, and click the
Slide Show Volume command to change the setting to Low, Medium, High, or Mute.
You can choose to loop the sound until you stop it I want to do this because I don't
know how long I will need it to play or you can change it from playing automatically when
the slide loads to requiring that the icon be clicked to start the sound.
Now, when I click the Slide Show command I can see the sound icon is not visible and
I can hear my music playing. As I move to the next slide the music will
stop. I can just press the Esc key to return to
Normal view. You may be wondering why the Picture Tools
Format tab is available. Well, the icon is a picture, so you may decide
you want to format it to make it blend with your presentation colors if you plan on having
it visible during slide show view. My guess is that usually you won't need to
do this, but PowerPoint does give you the option.
Now, if you change your mind and want to delete the sound, just select the icon, and then
select Delete on your keyboard. If you don't have a sound file on your computer
that you want to use, you can use sounds that are available in the Clip Organizer.
To do this, select the Insert tab, and then click the drop- down arrow on the Sound command.
From the menu, choose Sound From Clip Organizer, and the Clip Art task pane will appear on
the right. If you click the drop-down list to see the
media file types you can see that Sounds is selected.
So, when we search, only sound files will appear.
From here, you have access to hundreds of sounds.
Just enter some keywords in the search field that explain what type of sound you are looking
for, and then press the Go button. I actually want a piece of music that I can
play on my title slide, some type of background music for the audience to listen to before
I talk. So, I'll search for background music.
I have a lot of options. But, how can I decide which one I want to
use without listening? I think this Light Piano will probably be good, but to listen
to the sound file, just hover over the sound option, and click the drop-down arrow.
In the menu, choose Preview/Properties. Did you hear that? As soon as I chose Preview/Properties,
the Light Piano music started playing so I could hear the sound file.
At the same time, this Preview/Properties dialog box appeared.
On the right side of the dialog box there is a lot of information including the file
name, file size, and keywords. Take a look at the second part of this lesson
to learn more about sound!