Add Voice Narration to Microsoft PowerPoint Presentations

Noel Kalicharan
Categories : Windows platform ,Computing
Tags : Computing windows platform topics microsoft powerpoint

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Add Voice To Your PowerPoint Slide

In this article, we assume you want the voice of the presenter to play when the slide appears. The voice may simply read the text from the slide but it can be anything the presenter wants to say.

The first step is to create the recording of whatever needs to be said. There are many ways to do this. Using a stand-alone sound recording and editing program like Audacity can give excellent results. If you go this route, record what you want to say and save it in an audio file (.mp3, say). You can then add the file to your presentation as described in this article.

Here, we illustrate how to do it by using a built-in option in PowerPoint.

From the menu bar at the top of the screen, click on Insert > Movies and Sounds > Record Sound

(To see a larger view of any image, click on the image.)

This should bring up a box similar to the following:

PowerPointAudio402BrightHub

You can change the name of the recording to something appropriate like AudioSlide1:

PowerPointAudio403BrightHub

The button with the big, red dot is the Record button.

Before you begin to record, make sure that your headset (with microphone) is properly connected.

When you’re all set, press the Record button and begin speaking clearly into the microphone. If you make a mistake, just click Cancel and start over.

Tip: With a sound editing program, you can simply repeat the part where you made the mistake and delete the mistake afterwards.

If you wish to pause for a while, you can press the Stop (Rectangle) button, then press Record when you are ready to continue. Whenever the recording is stopped, you can hear what was recorded so far by pressing Play (Triangle).

When you are finished recording, click OK. The dialog box goes away and the following sound icon (shown selected) is placed on your slide:

PowerPointAudio303BrightHub

You can resize it or drag it to any convenient position on the slide. If you want to hear the recording, double-click on the icon.

You can now view your presentation. Press F5 (or select Slide Show > View Show) from the menu bar. The first slide comes up. Click on the icon to play the recording. When it ends, you can click to go to the next slide. If you click the mouse while the recording is playing, the recording would stop and you would go to the next slide.

In the next article, we show you how to get the recording to play automatically.

Additional Resources: For more tips, be sure to take a look at the other items in Bright Hub’s collection of PowerPoint user guides and tutorials. New and updated articles are being added on a regular basis, so bookmark us and check back often.

This post is part of the series: How To Add Audio To PowerPoint 2000/2003 Presentations

Ever wondered how to get your presentations to talk and sing? Welcome to a series of articles on how to add “audio” (music or speech) to your presentations. These articles are designed primarily for those who use PowerPoint 2000/2003 but the principles are all applicable to other versions.