Insert Flash Movies into PowerPoint 2016 for Windows using the Developer Tab

PowerPoint 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. However, these SWF clips may not play because of security settings. Fortunately, you can 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 or Microsoft Edge browsers.

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 2016 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 inserted Flash control and within the Developer tab, and click the Properties button (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 2016'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 and get back to PowerPoint interface.
To see you Flash movie playing, play your presentation in Slide Show view as shown in Figure 8, below.

Figure 8: A Flash SWF movie playing in PowerPoint
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.