PowerPoint Tips & Tutorials

Play music or narration throughout a presentation

If you just insert a sound without any other settings, you'll find that it stops when you go to the next slide. So how do you insert music or narration that continues throughout the presentation? This is a frequently asked question.

(The instructions here are for PowerPoint 2002 or 2003.)

Follow these steps:

1. Choose Insert, Movies and Sounds, then choose one of the options, such as Sound From File. Locate the sound and insert it. (You see a sound icon, which you can drag off the slide if you don't want it to appear during your presentation.)
2. A message appears asking  how you want the sound to play. Usually, you choose Automatically, but if you want the sound to wait for your mouse click, choose When Clicked. 
3. Right-click the sound's icon and choose Custom Animation from the shortcut menu. The Custom Animation pane opens with your sound file listed.
4. Click the arrow directly to the right of the sound icon and choose Effect Options. In the Play Sound dialog box, choose the Effects tab.
5. In the Stop Playing section, choose the After XXX slides option. Enter 999 in the box (the largest number allowed) so the sound will play throughout all your slides. Note: PowerPoint counts each display as a slide, so if you show some slides more than once, they count. 
6. Click OK to close the dialog box.

back to main tips menu for more tips