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.

Follow these steps:

In PowerPoint 2003, choose Insert, Movies and Sounds, then choose one of the options, such as Sound From File. (In PowerPoint 2007, go to Insert tab> Media Clips group> Sound.) 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.)
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. (In PowerPoint 2010, you need to click the Audio Tools Playback tab and choose Automatically from the Start drop-down list.)
In 2003, right-click the sound’s icon and choose Custom Animation from the shortcut menu. The Custom Animation pane opens with your sound file listed. In 2007, go to Animations tab> Custom Animations; in 2010, on the Animations tab, click Animation Pane.
Click the arrow directly to the right of the sound’s item in the Animation pane and choose Effect Options. In the Play Sound dialog box, choose the Effect tab.
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.
Click OK to close the dialog box.

Now your sound or music will play continuously throughout the presentation.

Ellen Finkelstein can train you or the presenters in your organization to create high-impact, engaging, professional presentations for training, sales, business, or education. For more information, please click here.

Shams

January 1, 2011 at 4:23 pm

Id like to know how to put several songs onto different slides without having them overlap because even when I trim the audio once it gets to the 5th slide where I inserted another song it still continues playing.
Thank you in advance.

Ellen

January 1, 2011 at 4:39 pm

In step 5 of the steps listed, instead of entering 999, enter 4. The music should stop after slide 4 and on slide 5, the new music should start.

lety

March 11, 2011 at 8:12 am

I have a ppt that I am using as a web presentation. The problem that I am having is when I move from one slide with music if the user goes back to that slide the music does not paly again.

Can you offer any suggestions?

Thanks

March 11, 2011 at 10:19 am

Lety,
Yes, this is a “feature” that doesn’t play animation, sounds, or timing when a slide is viewed a second time. This usually happens when you have hyperlinks that let the viewer navigate anywhere through the presentation. So when the viewer displays a slide a second time, the effects don’t work. There’s a workaround, although it’s a little complex. I have it on my site at http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/create-hyperlinks-in-a-timed-presentation/. Hope this helps,
Ellen

Greg

October 19, 2011 at 4:35 am

Sorry to dig up an old thread but I would like to solve a similar problem. Whilst getting music to play continuously through a show works fine, when it returns to the first page (where the music icon is) it starts a second version of the song playing over the first.

Previously a workaround was used whereby a custom show and hyperlink was used to bypass the first slide, but now clicking on the hyperlink stops the music.

Any suggestions?

October 19, 2011 at 11:00 am

I’m not sure if this will help–it sounds a little like the workaround you mention but there isn’t any hyperlink to click.
http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/create-hyperlinks-in-a-timed-presentation/
Ellen

Roshini Jojan

November 3, 2011 at 4:42 am

Thank you so much madam for your valuable information

Ginger

November 14, 2011 at 9:01 pm

All I can say is – Thank you!

Pigeon

January 3, 2012 at 6:30 am

Excuse me , how do i have one song play throughout the slide in Powerpoint Mac Version?

PLEEEEEEEEEESE help!!!

January 3, 2012 at 1:48 pm

If the instructions in this tip don’t help you, try Microsoft’s forum at http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/powerpoint?tab=all. Someone there should be able to help you. I don’t have a Mac.