Play a Sound Throughout a Slide Show in PowerPoint

PowerPoint allows you to insert all manner of multimedia to enhance your presentations. A popular form of multimedia to use is to insert audio. The audio can come in the form of a CD track, a recorded sound or an audio file that is stored on your computer.

PowerPoint 2010 can support most popular audio formats including MP3, WAV and WMA.

When you insert audio into a presentation in PowerPoint 2010, it will play in a slide show but stop as soon as you introduce the next slide. Making your sound play across the slides throughout the presentation is a great option when creating videos from a presentation such as a photo album slide show.

Insert audio into the Presentation

1. Click the Insert tab on the ribbon

2. Click the Audio button in the Media group and click Audio from File

3. Navigate to and select the audio file you want to use and click the Insert button

The sound is inserted and is represented by a speaker icon and some audio controls including a play button and volume controls.

Play the Audio Throughout the Presentation

With the sound already inserted:

1. Click on the speaker icon representing the sound

2. Click on the Playback tab on the ribbon

3. Click the list arrow next to the Start: option and select Play across slides from the list

When viewed in Slide Show view, the sound will now play throughout the presentation for the length of the sound.

Play the Audio Across Multiple Slides

At the moment the sound plays throughout the presentation or until the sound finishes. You may want the sound to stop playing after a certain number of slides.

1. Click on the Animations tab on the Ribbon

2. Click the Animation Pane button in the Advanced Animation group

3. The animation effect applied to the sound should be displayed in the Animation Pane. Click on the list arrow for the animation effect

4. Click on Effect Options in the list

5. The Effect tab of the Play Audio dialogue box is displayed. The After box in the Stop Playing panel should currently show 999. This ensures that the audio will not stop before the end of the presentation. Enter the required number of slides you want the sound to play for

6. Click the Ok button

When the presentation is now played in Slide Show view, the sound will stop playing after the number of slides specified.

Find more PowerPoint tutorials in the online Microsoft PowerPoint training guides.