Record Slide Show in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac

Recording slides is almost like delivering a presentation that you cannot deliver in person! Let's imagine that you cannot deliver your slides in person. What you would then want to do is to deliver your presentation in front of your computer, almost as if you had a live audience present, all this while, your narrations are being recorded. Even the time you spend on each slide is recorded along with the time taken for each animation to play. In PowerPoint 2011, as far as interface is considered, there is no difference between the options available for rehearsing slides and for recording a slide show. The only difference is that while recording a slide show, along with the time spent on each slide, your narrations are also being recorded through the connected microphone.

Follow these steps to get started with recording your presentation:

First of all make sure that you have a decent microphone that is attached to your computer and works well. This page on microphones for PowerPoint will help.
Thereafter save your presentation. Even better, make a backup copy of your presentation, just in case.
With your presentation open, access the Slide Show tab of the Ribbon, and click the Record Slide Show button, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 1, below.

Figure 1: Record Slide Show button
This brings up the Recording view (shown in Figure 2 below), which essentially is Presenter view that is equipped with the Recording options.

Figure 2: Recording view
From this point onwards, the Recording works in exactly the same way as explained in our Rehearse Slides Timings tutorial, read from Point 4 onwards on that page. But although the options look the same, do remember that your narrations are being recorded while you speak from slide to slide.
Once your recording is completed and saved, you can see an audio icon on all slides in the presentation, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 3.

Figure 3: Audio icon on each slide

Note: Do you know that you can bring in narrations within PowerPoint without using the Record Slide Show option? To do so, record your narrations within an external program such as Audacity or Adobe Audition. Then save these narrations as single files, with each individual narration file intended to be used per slide. Thereafter insert them as regular audio files.