Sound Across Slides in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows

Do you want to add a sound track to your PowerPoint presentation so that it plays across slides -- so that when you move from one slide to another, the music continues playing without any interruption? A soothing background music score playing across your presentation slides can be a good move, as far is its not distracting your audience. Of course, if a live speaker is spearheading the presentation -- then it goes without question that you don't want to add a sound that spans across slides. Not only will this distract the audience, but the speaker will be at a distinct disadvantage. However, if you are showing a sequence of slides that include pictures -- and no live presenter is required to speak to the audience -- then adding a sound across slides may be a great idea -- here's how you go about doing this task in PowerPoint 2010:

Remember: As far as possible, work with a presentation that has been saved at least once. And copy the sound clip you want to loop to the same folder as the presentation.

Navigate to the slide where you want the sound to begin playing, which is usually the first slide of the presentation. And insert the sound clip in this slide. By default PowerPoint will embed the sound clip within the presentation -- but you can opt to link it rather than embed -- learn how to insert sound (and embed or link your inserted sound) in our Insert Audio (Sound) in PowerPoint 2010 tutorial.
Select the sound icon, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Audio icon selected
You will notice that selecting the sound icon makes the Audio Tool Format and Audio Tool Playback contextual tabs visible on the Ribbon. Click the Audio Tools Playback tab of the Ribbon to activate it as shown in Figure 2 below.

Figure 2: Audio Tools Playback tab of the Ribbon

Note: The Audio Tools Playback tab is a contextual tab. Contextual tabs are special tabs in the Ribbon that are not visible all the time -- they only make an appearance when you are working with a particular slide object which can be edited using special options.
This tab offers you different options to control the playback of the audio you have selected. Within the Audio Options group, locate the Start drop-down list (highlighted in red in Figure 3), and select the Play across slides option. Select the Loop until Stopped check-box (highlighted in green in Figure 3).

Figure 3: Play across slides option and Loop until Stopped checkbox selected
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, as shown in Figure 4 - your sound shall still play fine.

Figure 4: Sound icon moved off the slide
Save your presentation often!