How to Get Sound on a PowerPoint Presentation

After spending two hours last night trying to figure out how to get the audio to work on my PowerPoint for a big presentation I had due at 8 am this morning, I have decided to write about it. Hopefully you will find my article first, and won't have to search through countless pages of content just to try to get sound onto a PowerPoint. So here are a few tips I discovered that allowed me to finally hear the audio on my Presentation:

It all started when I plugged my headset (headphones and microphone) into my computer in hopes of recording myself talking to place it in my PowerPoint. I thought that simply doing that would make it work- wrong.

The first thing you have to do when you plug in your headset is to check the settings on your computer. You can do this by going to the control panel, or even when you plug your headset in, a display box should appear that asks what you have just plugged in. You need to pic Device: Mic, and then test the sound to make sure that you can hear from the headphones whatever you say into the microphone.

After doing this, you should be good to go. You can practice recording yourself to make sure it works, though, before you begin with the presentation.

So next, open up your presentation and go to Insert Sound. It allows you to either add sounds that are already on your computer, or record your own. You should just record it right then if you have the headset, so hit record and recite whatever it is that you are saying for your presentation. Then Save the file under whatever name you would like. After saving, I recommend clicking on the little sound display to listen just to make sure that what you said was recorded. This is where I found so much trouble last night. Every time I recorded something I would try to listen over it, and could hear nothing. That is when I figured out that I had not set the appropriate settings when I first plugged in my headset.

So there you have it. If you simply plug the headset in, adjust the right settings, and then record what you need to say directly in the presentation, you should have no problem. Good Luck!