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Sound Across Slides

Works with PowerPoint 2002 and 2003

See Also: Sound Across Slides in all PowerPoint versions

by Geetesh Bajaj, June 26th 2008

Follow these steps to loop a music (or any sound) file across slides in PowerPoint 2002 (XP) and 2003:

1. Navigate the first slide of the presentation and choose Insert | Movies And Sounds | Sound From File… as shown in Figure 2.
   
   
   Figure 2: Sound from file
   
   
2. This opens Insert Sound dialog box as shown in Figure 3. Navigate to the sound track you want to insert and click OK.
   
   Note: PowerPoint allows you to insert several types of sounds in various formats -- but WAV, WMA, and MP3 work best.
   
   
   Figure 3: Insert Sound
   
   
3. PowerPoint brings up a message window, as shown in Figure 4 asking how you want the sound to start in the slideshow. You can choose the When Clicked option, but Automatically works best -- so go ahead and select Automatically.
   
   
   Figure 4: Play automatically
   
   
4. This will insert the sound in the slide -- Figure 5 shows the inserted sound icon that you'll probably find right in the center of the slide.
   
   
   Figure 5: Sound icon
   
   
5. Right click the sound icon and choose Custom Animation in resultant context menu (see Figure 6).
   
   
   Figure 6: Right-click menu
   
   This will open the Custom Animation task pane on the right side of the PowerPoint interface.
   
   
6. Now click the sound file listed within the pane - click again on the down arrow next to the name of your sound file to bring up a menu. In this resultant menu, choose Effect Options (see Figure 7).
   
   
   Figure 7: Effect options
   
   
7. This will summon the Play Sound dialog box as shown in Figure 8. In the Effects tab, under Start playing choose the From beginning radio button. For the Stop playing option, choose After and type 999 (refer to figure 8).
   
   Note: You type 999 here since that's the largest number that PowerPoint will allow you to add here.
   
   
   Figure 8: Play Sound
   
   
8. In the Timings tab, match your settings with the following screenshot.
   
   
   Figure 9: Timing tab
   
   When done, click OK to get back to your slide.
   
   
9. Right click the sound icon again and choose the Edit Sound Object as shown in Figure 10.
   
   
   Figure 10: Edit Sound Object
   
   
10. This brings up the Sound Options dialog box (see Figure 11).
    
    
    Figure 11: Sound Options
    
    Under Play options check the Loop until stopped box (highlighted in red) and click OK.
    
    
11. In all versions of PowerPoint, you might see a sound icon on the slide where you inserted the sound - if you don't like the icon on the slide, just drag it to anywhere off the slide - your sound shall still play fine.