Insert Sound

If we want to introduce music to serve as background for our presentation, or play a sound between two slides, or add sound to an animation in the slide, it does not matter, it can be done in “PowerPoint”.

To add sound to a slide, first select the “Insert” tab in the “Ribbon”.

Click on the downward pointing arrow on the “Audio” button.

This opens a drop-down menu with different options.  The first option is “Sound from File” — this allows us to insert a sound from our computer. This is also the option you’d have gotten if you had clicked on the upper part of the “Audio” button.
The second option is “Clip Art Audio”. If you choose this option, the “Clip Art” task pane will be opened with all the sound files from the gallery.

The option “Play CD song …” which was present in the previous version, has disappeared.
Why? I do not know.  Although we can still add the button to the “Quick Access” toolbar or the “Ribbon”, it does not work for me.

 

Last we have ” Record Sound” option.

You choose this when you want to add narration to your presentation. Obviously, you need to have a microphone available.

As an example, I’m taking a sound from the “Clip Organizer” to insert, so I choose “Clip Art Audio”.

This opens the “Clip Art” task pane, as I previously mentioned.

When the mouse pointer moves over the various files, a downward pointing arrow appears next to the file.

 

Clicking this unfolds a drop-down menu below the “Preview / Properties.”

If you click, it opens the “Preview / Properties” dialog and an example of this sound will be played.

By clicking on the “Previous” or “Next” buttons you can listen or navigate between the different sound files in the gallery.

Click the “Close” button at the bottom of this dialog box when you have heard enough and, have chosen what file you want to insert.

 

To insert the sound file we have two ways.
The first, and the fastest, is to double-click the file, in the “Picture Window”.
A second way is again, to move your mouse pointer over the file in the “Picture Window”, click the downward arrow button and select “Insert” from the drop-down menu

 

In the previous version of “PowerPoint”, it opened a dialog with the question of how we would start the sound. This has changed in “PowerPoint” 2010.

In “PowerPoint” 2010, the audio file can be inserted directly into the slide.
This audio file consists of two parts, you have the sound icon (1) and the “play bar” (2).
We can set the sound options through the “Playback” (3) tab that appears.

I’ll quickly go through this once.

The first option “Play” shows us an example of the sound.

Regarding the second option “Add Bookmark”, I feel it is clear. “Bookmarks” are useful during a presentation, in case you quickly need to find a particular spot in an audio clip.

In the picture on the right, you see an audio file where a bookmark has been added.

You see the orange circle is added to the “Play bar”.

 

The third option “Remove Bookmark” seems clear.

The fourth option “Trim Audio” opens a dialog where we can edit the sound file. “Edit” is perhaps too large a word, but we can control the start and stop time of the sound .

With the “Fade In” and “Fade Out” options, imagine the blending effect of the beginning or end of the sound. Soft to loud , or vice versa.

The “Volume” means volume, it seems logical to me.

 

With the “Start” option you have three options. All seem clear to me.

The “Hide during show” option hides the sound icon while the presentation is played.

 

The “Loop until stopped” option will do what it says i.e, it always repeats the sound until it is put to stop. The stopping of the sound takes place when we navigate to the next slide or when we click the “Stop” button in the “Play bar” .

 

Finally, we have the “Rewind after playing.”  Select this when the sound needs to be rewound after playing during the presentation.

 

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