I Want My Sound to Play for the Whole Powerpoint Show

When you insert a music file into a PowerPoint slide the default setting will be to STOP PLAYING when the next mouse click happens. This can cause two possible unforeseen problems.

Problem 1

With a slide set to automatically advance, the slide will wait for the music to finish BEFORE advancing. Any "after previous" animations will also wait.

Problem 2

With a show set to advance on click, the music will stop when you click to advance to the next slide. Any "on click" animations will also stop the music.

If you wanted the music to play for the whole presentation (or even for just several slides) clearly this is NOT what you intended!

Answer 1 - Transition sound method

If your music is in .wav format insert as a transition sound. This will play across slides and be embedded in the presentation. See How to embed wav files in Powerpoint for how to do this.

If the music is an mp3 see How to embed mp3 sounds in Powerpoint for how to use mp3's as transition sounds.

Answer 2 - Inserted sounds / CD tracks

If you added your sound through Insert > Movies and sound (or Insert > Sound in 2007) use this method:

Go to Slide Show > Custom Animation. In the pane that opens, locate the entry for the music file. Double click on this entry and in the dialogue box that opens choose the "Effect" tab (if not already open).

Select the button labelled "Stop playing" - After: xxx slides

Set the value to either the number of slides in the presentation or the number of slides you want the sound to stop playing after. If you would like to play the music for the whole show and are not sure how many slides there will be, you can just insert 999 (the maximum allowed) or a number that you are sure will be greater than the number of slides to be used.

NB If you wanted the music to play for only this slide but not to stop when you use "on click" animations you should select "Stop playing" - "After current slide" or "after 1 slide"

If you have the 2007 version Custom Animation is opened from the 'Animation' Tab.

In 2007 ONLY you can select the icon for the sound (a speaker) and then SOUND TOOLS and in the SoundOptions > Play Sounds section select 'Play Across Slides'. This will set stop playing to ' After 999 Slides'

Only available in 2007 version

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