There are many ways to improve your PowerPoint presentation—adding animations to objects, customizing slide transition styles, and using interesting themes to name a few. In addition to all that, you can also add music to your presentation.

Adding Music to Your Presentation

PowerPoint makes it very simple to add music to your presentation. Adding music to your presentation may be a great idea, but there are also cases where it may be considered unprofessional. We're not here to tell you when to do it, just how to do it, but make sure it's appropriate for the situation.

Switch to the "Insert" tab and then click the "Audio" button.

Audio in media section

A menu will appear, giving you the option to either upload music from your PC or record your own audio track.

two audio options

If you'd like to record your own audio, select "Record Audio," and the "Record Sound" window will appear. Go ahead and give your audio a name, then click the "Record" icon when you're ready to start.

Record audio

After the "Record" icon is selected, a timer will start which gives you the total length of the sound being recorded. Once you're ready to stop recording, press the "Stop" icon. To listen to your recording, you can press the "Play" icon. If you're happy with what you're recording, select "OK" to insert it into your presentation.

Finish recording audio

If you prefer to upload music from your PC instead, go back to the audio options menu and select "Audio on My PC." This will open your PC's directory. Locate the audio file you'd like to use, then select "Insert" at the bottom-right of the window. PowerPoint supports several popular formats, like MP3, MP4, WAV, and AAC.

Insert audio from PC

Now you'll see a speaker icon appear in your presentation. Here, you can play the audio, control the volume, and move the audio back or forward 0.25 seconds.

Audio microphone

Additionally, the "Playback" tab appears in the ribbon. By default, the "Audio Style" is automatically set to "No Style." This means that the audio will only play on the slide where you insert it, the icon will appear in the presentation, and the audio will only begin once you click that icon.

But you can change all that. You can use the options here to adjust the default playback volume, choose whether the music starts automatically or on a click, whether it plays across other slides, whether it loops until you stop it, and so on.

We're going to change this by selecting "Play in Background" in the "Audio Styles" section.

play in background

There are a few other options available to you, as well. You can add (or remove) bookmarks for specific times in your audio clip, trim parts of the audio, and give your audio a fade in/out effect.

other options

Use these tools to customize the perfect audio for your presentation.

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