Audio Styles in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows

When you select an audio clip in PowerPoint 2013, you will see two extra contextual tabs on the Ribbon. One of these tabs is the Audio Tool Playback tab that provides options to configure properties that define how your inserted audio will play. Whether it will play automatically, or will it play audio across slides? Let's assume that you want your audio to play as a background score across multiple slides -- typically you would have to make four separate choices -- but PowerPoint 2013's new Audio Styles feature lets you automatically apply these four settings at once!

Follow these steps to explore the Audio Styles:

1. Open a presentation which already has an audio clip inserted -- select the audio clip, as shown in Figure 1.
   
   
   Figure 1: Audio Tools Playback tab of the Ribbon
2. This brings up the Audio Tools Format and Playback tabs. Click the Playback tab to activate it, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 1.
3. Within this tab, access the Audio Styles group (highlighted in blue within Figure 1 , above). You'll find two buttons which are explained below:
   
   
   1. No Style: This button is selected by default. Click this button to remove any applied Audio Style from your inserted audio.
   
   
   2. Play in Background: Click this button to apply the four settings to play the audio across the multiple slides with just one click.
      
      
      Figure 2: Check-boxes are selected
      
      Note that when the Play in Background button is clicked (highlighted in red within Figure 2), then these settings change, as shown highlighted in blue within Figure 2. The changes that take place are:
      
      Start option is set to Automatically,
      Play Across Slides is selected,
      Loop until Stopped is selected, and
      Hide During Show check-box is also selected.
   
   
4. Note that if the No Style button is selected (highlighted in red within Figure 3), all these options swap back to their defaults, as shown highlighted in blue within Figure 3. In Figure 1 shown earlier on this page, you can see the default status of these settings.
   
   
   Figure 3: Check-boxes not selected
5. Make sure you save your presentation.

See Also:

Audio Styles in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows