Insert Sound in PowerPoint 97, 2000, 2002 and 2003 for Windows

There are many ways to bring in sounds in PowerPoint -- event sounds, transition sounds, and as I am going to show you now: inserted sounds.

Follow these steps to insert sound in PowerPoint:

In PowerPoint, navigate to the slide where you want the sound to be inserted.
Choose Insert | Movies and Sounds| Sound from File as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Choose a Sound to insert
This will summon the Insert Sound dialog box that you can see in Figure 2. Navigate and choose the sound file you want to insert, and then click the OK button.

Figure 2: Insert Sound

Remember that PowerPoint only allows you to insert a limited range of sound file types such as WAV, MP3, WMA, MIDI, AIFF, etc. If you need to insert a sound in another format, you'll have to convert it to a format that PowerPoint accepts.
This get you back to your slide -- PowerPoint prompts you with a dialog box as shown in Figure 3 asking whether the sound to play Automatically or When Clicked in the slide show.

Figure 3: Placed sound on a slide

If you choose Automatically, PowerPoint will play the sound the instant that the slide containing the sound is shown in slide show view.

If you choose When Clicked, the presenter will have to click on the sound icon that PowerPoint places on the slide to play the sound.
Whichever option you choose (as explained above), PowerPoint will place a sound icon on the center of the slide. You can right-click this sound icon, which displays the menu shown in Figure 4. To look at more advanced options, choose Edit Sound Object.

Figure 4: Edit Sound Object
This opens the Sound Options dialog box as shown in Figure 5, which allows to change the sound volume, make the sound loop, hide the sound icon during slide show, etc. You'll also be able to find out how long the sound plays, and the path to the the sound file.

Figure 5: Sound Options
After making changes, click OK to apply the changes.