PowerPoint 2013 allows you to
insert video (and also
online videos) files within your presentation -- one of the file
formats that you can use for these video options is Flash SWF. You can also use the Developer tab of the
Ribbon to insert Flash SWF movies. First of all, make the
Developer tab visible as it is not visible by default. You also
need to have the updated version of Adobe's Shockwave Flash ActiveX control -- to make sure, you have the current version installed,
go to this site using
Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Remember: If you are inserting a Flash movie within PowerPoint, you need to place the Flash movie in the same folder which contains
the PowerPoint presentation.
Follow these steps to insert a Flash movie into PowerPoint 2013 using the Developer tab:
- Open the PowerPoint presentation and select the slide where you want to insert the Flash movie.
- Access the Developer tab of the Ribbon, and click the
More Controls button (highlighted in red within Figure 1).

Figure 1: More Controls button
- This will bring up the More Controls dialog box that you can see in Figure 2. Select the Shockwave Flash
Object option, and click the OK button.

Figure 2: More Controls dialog box
- The cursor will now turn into a crosshair. Drag and place an instance of the control on the slide, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Shockwave Flash Object control placed on the slide
- With the Flash control inserted, you need to set the properties -- to do that select the the inserted Flash control and within the
Developer tab, and click the Properties button (shown highlighted in red within
Figure 4).

Figure 4: Properties button
Alternatively you can right-click the inserted Flash movie, and from the contextual menu, choose Property Sheet option, as shown
highlighted in red within Figure 5.

Figure 5: Property Sheet option
- Either of these actions will bring up the Properties pane that you can see in Figure 6.

Figure 6: Properties pane
- Within the Properties pane, select the Movie option and type the name of your Flash SWF (see
Figure 7) -- no path is required since the presentation and Flash movie (SWF) are placed in the same folder. Also make sure that the
EmbedMovie option remains set to False, since PowerPoint 2013's security options don't respect the
True value for EmbedMovie.
Figure 7: Properties pane with a link to the inserted Flash movie
- Close the Properties pane to get back to PowerPoint interface.
- To see you Flash movie playing, play your presentation in Slide Show
view.
- Save your presentation.
Note: If you save your PowerPoint presentations with Flash movies inserted in them as the default PPTX files, then those Flash movies
will not play in PowerPoint 2003 or previous versions (on Windows). To have them play in those older versions, you should work with PPT files (the
older PowerPoint file format) rather than PPTX files.
See Also:
Insert Flash Movies into PowerPoint 2016 for Windows
using the Developer Tab
Insert Flash Movies into PowerPoint 2010 using the
Developer Tab for Windows
Insert Flash Movies into PowerPoint 2007 using the
Developer Tab for Windows