If you use Windows Media Player or any other player to create
playlists of your favorite songs, you'll love the new PowerPoint
2003 feature that allows PowerPoint to play your entire playlist.
Actually, you can also design a cool presentation that makes your
slideshow look like a jukebox - or if you are less adventurous
or corporate, you could always use the playlist feature to play
a series of musical clips in sequence.
In this tutorial, we are using Windows Media Player playlists,
but PowerPoint 2003 can also accept standard M3U playlists - most
players can create and edit M3U playlists. If you want to learn
more about how Windows Media Player manages playlists, look
here...
- In Windows Media Player, create a Playlist consisting of the
sequence of
sounds that you want to play. You'll find more info about creating playlists later
in this page...
- In PowerPoint 2003, create or open an existing presentation
and go to the slide where you want to begin playing the sounds
and choose Insert | Movies and Sounds | Sound from File...
- Navigate to the folder containing the playlist (*.WPL) file
(you might need to change the "files of type" option
to "All files (*.*)"
- Select desired *.WPL playlist and click OK. (you can also
choose another playlist format like *.M3U that PowerPoint can
recognize). PowerPoint will prompt you if you want the sound
to start "Automatically" - accept this option.
- Right-click the shape that PowerPoint places on the slide
and choose the Custom Animation option. In the Custom Animation
task pane click on the item and choose "Effect Options" from
the drop-down menu.
- Specify in the "Stop playing" group how many slides
you want the play
list to continue playing through. The largest number you can enter is 999
slides.
Note: It is a great idea to combine playlists and PowerPoint's
Photo Album feature, especially if your playlist comprises only
audio media (no video clips).
Note: Since a playlist can include either audio or video,
the playlist object will appear and behave like a Movie object
in PowerPoint for video. For sounds, it will appear as a black
rectangle on the slide (where Windows Media visualizations will
appear for audio). There's a current bug where the "hide while
not playing" setting does not work. However, if that matters
a lot, you can always drag the rectangle off the slide area in
editing mode.
