How to Add Music Song to PowerPoint Presentation

Applies to: Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007

Have you made a PowerPoint slide show for celebration or photo album for memory? Are you searching the way to add music to your PowerPoint presentation to jazz it up further and make it more entertaining?

Here below is a tutorial about how to add music to your PowerPoint presentation and get it to span across multiple slides or the whole range of slides.

 

Step 1. Download or find the right MP3 or WAV music
We usually use music in MP3 or WAV format in our PowerPoint presentation. It is better to download or choose the music in MP3 format. This format has the smallest file size and good quality as well.

However, it is a pity that MP3 song cannot be embedded into PowerPoint presentation. It can only be linked.

Last but not the least, you need to make sure that you have all copyright permissions to include the song into your presentation.
Music is ready.

 

Step 2. Insert music

1. Open your presentation and display the slide you want to add music or sound effect.
2. From the Insert main menu -> Media Clip group -> Sound icon on the right side of the ribbon.

 

 

1. Click the drop down arrow of Sound and select Sound from File…. A window will appear allowing you to browse to music file that you want to associate with the slide. After choosing the right music, click OK.


2. You will be prompted to choose the way the music would play. Click Automatically to set it play automatically when you go to the slide. Click When Clicked to set it play only when you click the sound icon.


3. After this, an icon of a speaker will appear in the middle of your slide. You are allowed to move the icon to any location you desired on the slide.


4. Adding process completed. The music would only play for the single slide.

If you have PowerPoint 2003, the difference is that the operation directory is main menu Insert > Movies and Sounds > Sound from File…. The other sub-steps are nearly the same.

 

Step 3. Set its effect
How to set the music to play across multiple slides as it is useful especially the self-running slide show is prepared for a wedding, anniversary or trade show?

1. Open Custom Animation task pane from main menu Animations -> Custom Animation. It would appear on the right.
3. Click the drop down arrow of the music item you just added from the Custom Animation list and select Effect Options. A window named Play Sound is displayed.


4. Select After and then set the total number of slides the file should play on under Stop Playing part on Effect tab of Play Sound window. If the number of slides you assign here is the same with the whole number of your presentation, the music would play across your slide show as long as the music track's duration is long enough.

 

Besides the stop time setting here, you can also double click the speaker icon to set other sound effect. After double click the speaker icon, the contextual menu displays. Options you can change are:

1. volume
   You can adjust the volume of the sound to Low, Medium, High, or Mute.
2. whether to loop (play continuously) the sound until the end of the presentation
3. hide the sound icon on the slide
4. maximum size of the sound file that can play
   It determines the file size that can be embedded to your presentation.
5. play automatically, across a specific number of slides or on click

Step 4. Embed music
When your presentation has linked audio file and you want to present it on another PC, you need to copy both the linked audio file and the presentation to another computer. You also need to check whether it plays correctly or not to make safe. Sometimes, you need to insert the music again if it does not play correctly.

Hence, you may choose to embed the audio file into your presentation. Then it would be contained in your presentation.
To embed WAV file, you need to follow a couple of steps.

1. First of all, you should make sure that the music file is in WAV format (MP3 file can only be linked, not embedded).
2. By default, the file which is smaller than 100 KB in size would be embedded. If you WAV file is larger than 100KB, you need to change the file size limitation first. It can be changed in the Sound Options group on the contextual menu when you double click the speaker icon on the slide.

That’s it! It’s not that difficult to add music to your PowerPoint presentation to make it more funny and entertaining. Enjoy it!

 

Tips:

1. MP3 is the best way to do this. If you are downloading music from the Apple iTunes service, you will need to convert them to mp3 format.


2. If you choose When Clicked play option, the sound will begin when you click on the sound icon that appears on the slide. This option should be used with much caution because you must click precisely on the sound icon for the sound to play. If you click on the slide by mistake, the presentation will advance to the next action.


3. If the path name of a linked file exceeds 128 characters, Microsoft Office PowerPoint is not able to find and play that linked file. In such a case, you can either rename the linked file, or shorten the path name by copying the linked file into the same folder where your presentation is located.
4. The embedded WAV files are limited within 50 Mb.

It is nearly the same to add video movie clip to your PowerPoint presentations. You may refer to the tutorial to put Youtube video to your PowerPoint presentations for details.

 

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