PowerPoint: Adding a sound to an animation

When I was hosting the Word part of the Microsoft Labs at the 2011 WritersUA Conference last week, one of the attendees (let’s call him Bill) asked what I knew about PowerPoint and if I could help him solve a problem he had. Well, my PowerPoint knowledge is OK, but I’m not an expert in it. However, with a little experimenting using the right-click options, I was able to solve Bill’s problem in a few seconds! He was most grateful.

Problem

Bill had a set of bullet points he’d animated so that they appeared on individual mouse clicks — click once and the first bullet item appeared, click again and the second bullet item appeared, click a third time and the third bullet item appeared, etc.

He had the animation working as he wanted it to, but as this slide presentation was a looping one that the viewer — not a presenter — controlled, he wanted to add voice to each bulleted item that explained each item.

Solution

(This solution works similarly in PowerPoint 2003, 2007 and 2010, though some of the screen shots will differ in the various versions)

1. Select a bullet item with animation applied.
2. If not already displayed, show the Custom Animation pane (called Animation in PowerPoint 2010).
3. In the Custom Animation pane, right-click on the selected bullet item.
4. Choose Effect Options.
   
5. By default, there is no sound — select a sound from the Sound list, or scroll to the bottom of the list and select Other Sound… If you select Other Sound, a file explorer window opens for you to navigate to and select the sound file to attach to this animation. The only sound files you can select are *.wav files.
   
6. Set other options from the Effect and Timing tabs on this window.
7. Click OK when you’ve finished.
8. Display the slide in Slide Show view and click to display each bullet item and its attached sound.

Bill was happy! And I was happy that I could help him as I never knew this was even an option in PowerPoint.

Cool PowerPoint tip!

Here’s how to extract audio and images from a PowerPoint 2007 or 2010 slide deck:

http://iconlogic.blogs.com/weblog/2010/11/powerpoint-2007-2010-how-to-extract-audio-images-from-a-presentation.html

[Link last checked November 2010; thanks to AJ George of IconLogic, the author of these clear instructions]

PowerPoint: Change bullet indent for all slides

One of the things I hate about PowerPoint (even in Office 2007), is that there are no obvious styles you can set up and apply to text. So if your bullet indents aren’t quite as you want them, there’s not a lot you can do.

However, PowerPoint goes some way towards styles in their Master Slide view. It’s not quite the ability to apply styles like in Word, but it’s something.

PowerPoint 2003

To change the bullet indent in PowerPoint 2003:

1. From the menu, select View > Master > Slide Master.
2. If you don’t see the ruler at the top of the slide window, select View > Ruler from the menu.
3. By default, a blank presentation has five indent levels. These levels all have bullets and text indents. The position of these indents correspond to pairs of tab markings on the ruler. In the diagram below, I have used a yellow highlight to show the first level. The first tab mark at the top left of the ruler corresponds to the bullet position.
   

   PowerPoint Ruler showing tab markers

4. In your PowerPoint master slide, click and drag the first upper tab marker to the right and see what happens to the bullet for the first level.
5. Now click and drag the left-most lower tab marker. You can drag it a little to the left, but as you drag it to the right, notice that the other tab markers move too—PowerPoint doesn’t let you have a smaller indent for a lower level than that for a higher level.
6. Move the various upper and lower tab markers to get the bullet and indent positions you want. If you click and drag the pointing up bit of a lower tab marker, you’ll just move the text indent, whereas if you click and drag the box bit, you’ll move the bullet and text indents at the same time.

   

7. When you’re done, save your changes, then click the Close Master View button.

PowerPoint 2007

To change the bullet indent in PowerPoint 2007:

1. Select the View tab on the ribbon.
2. Select the Ruler check box to turn on the ruler.
3. Click the Slide Master button.
4. Click the top thumbnail on the left.
5. Click in the line you want to change the indents for, then move the upper and lower tab markers in the ruler to set that level’s bullet and text indent positions.
6. When you’re done, save your changes, then click the Close Master View button.