How to insert music on PowerPoint
Are you making a PowerPoint presentation, would you like to add background music to the slides but you don’t know how to do it? Don’t worry, that’s why I’m here today. Give me five minutes of your time and I’ll explain how to insert music on PowerPoint quickly and easily.
The procedure you need to follow is really simple, no technical knowledge is required to put it into practice. Also know that you can use audio files of any genre, from popular MP3s to WAV files, passing through FLAC files, M4A MIDI, and more. The only thing you need to pay attention to is the location of the audio files used in the presentation: by default, PowerPoint embeds only WAV files up to 100KB large in presentations, all others are simply “linked” to the slides and then got saved “separately” and copied together with the presentation itself (in this regard I suggest you keep them in the same folder as the PowerPoint PPTX / PPT file).
But now let’s not dwell too much on these technical discussions, let’s roll up our sleeves immediately and see how to create a “musical” presentation in all the most popular versions of PowerPoint for Windows and macOS. At the end of the tutorial, you will have background music that will accompany you during your presentation and you will make a great impression with friends and colleagues, I guarantee it!
PowerPoint 2007/2016
If you want to learn how to insert music on PowerPoint and you are using a recent version of Microsoft Office (from 2007 to 2016), open the presentation in which you want to insert the background music and select the slide from which you want to start the background music (from the left sidebar). Then click on the tab insert PowerPoint (top left), press the button Audio located on the right, and select the item Audio in personal PC (or Audio from a file on Mac) from the menu that opens to choose the song to insert in the presentation. You can select any audio file in WAV, MP3, FLAC, M4A, MIDI AIFF, MKA, WMA, ADTS, or AU format.
As already explained at the beginning of the post, in most cases the passages are linked to the presentation and not incorporated into it (also because in this way the “weight” of the presentation remains contained). My advice is, therefore, to place the audio files in the same folder as the presentation, in this way you will always have them all at your fingertips and you will not run the risk of forgetting someone if you have to move the presentation to another folder or on external support.
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| How to insert music on PowerPoint Copyright © Aranzulla |
Once you have chosen the music file to use as the background of the presentation, click on the speaker that appears in the center of the slide and select the tab Reproduction from the PowerPoint toolbar to adjust how the music is played during the presentation. You can set the music to last for the entire presentation or to play only while viewing the slide in which it was inserted and you can choose whether to start it automatically or on mouse click.
To choose how to start playing the song, expand the drop-down menu Start and select the item Automatically if you want to start the music as soon as the slide on the screen or the option is displayed On mouse click if you want to start it after the click of the mouse.
In order not to interrupt the music playback when you switch from one slide to another, put the checkmark next to the item Play between slides while if you want the music to be played in a loop (starting all over at the end of the song) put the checkmark next to the items Loop continuously until interrupted And Rewind after playing.
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The button is also available on the most recent versions of PowerPoint (e.g. 2016) Play in the background which activates all the options in one go to allow continuous playback of the music as background playback (play between slides, rewind after playback, and so on).
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| How to insert music on PowerPoint ©Aranzulla |
Other very useful functions that are available in the tab Reproduction PowerPoint are the one that allows you to hide the speaker icon while playing the presentation (Hide during the presentation), the one that allows you to adjust the Volume audio, and the one for cut the audio.
Also, using the fields Fade in And Fade out (both located at the top left) you can apply a fade effect at the beginning and end of the background music playback of your slideshow.
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| How to insert music on PowerPoint ©Aranzulla |
If you want to start playing a song following the display of animation and/or the appearance of an element on the screen, go to the tab Animations PowerPoint and activate the Animation pane by clicking on the appropriate button located at the top right.
Next, locate the entry for the audio files you inserted into your presentation, move it after the animation or object of your interest, and set its playback to Start after the previous one by clicking on the arrow located on the right. By selecting the item Intervals from the same menu you can also set a custom time interval after which to start playing the song.
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| How to insert music on PowerPoint ©Aranzulla |
PowerPoint 2003 and earlier
Wishes insert music on PowerPoint in a presentation you are making with Office 2003 or earlier? No problem, the procedure to follow is slightly more complex than the one seen for Office 2010/2007 but you can do the same. First, you have to start PowerPoint and open the presentation in which you want to insert the background music (through the menu File> Open). Then select the slide from which to start the music from the left sidebar and go to the menu Insert> Movies and Audio> Sound from File to select the music file to add to the slideshow. In the window that opens, click on Automatically or Manually depending on how you intend to start the background music in the slides.
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At this point, if you wish, you must set the music file to play throughout the presentation and not stop at the first click. To do this, you need to right-click the icon of the speaker in the center of the slide and click on the item Custom animation from the menu that opens. In the sidebar that appears on the right, double click on the name of the audio file inserted in the presentation and, in the window that opens, put the checkmark next to the item After. Then type the number of slides after which the music should stop in the adjacent text field and click on the button OK to save the settings.
How to insert music on PowerPoint?