When you directly ‘insert’ a song in PowerPoint, it will play once to its original length, (3 minutes for example – then finish). But your PowerPoint presentation would last much longer. So, how to set the song as background music to play across entire slides?
For Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 users, here’s how its done…
First, open your PowerPoint file and insert the music into PowerPoint 2010 as usual:
Click the ‘insert’ tab located along the top PowerPoint toolbar. Then, locate the ‘Audio’ icon, located on the far right of the lower toolbar, and click the arrow below it to bring down the sub menu. From here, you will notice the options: ‘Audio from File’, ‘Clip Art Audio’, and ‘Record Audio’. You can choose whichever option you prefer.
Click the small speaker representing the audio file you have inserted, and the ‘Audio Tools’ interface displays. Click the ‘Playback’ icon.
Select the ‘Play across slides’ option from the submenu of ‘Start’ on the right side of ‘Volume.’
Next, select the ‘Animation Pane’ option under the ‘Animations’ tab. Right-click the audio file in the emerging ‘Animation Pane’ window on the left, and select ‘Effect’ ‘Options’ from the drop-down list.
Then the ‘Play Audio’ interface appears. In the ‘Effect’ tab, make your choice at ‘Stop Playing-After XXX slides.’
After you have done testing your music, you can hit the esc key to exit the slide show.
That’s all you need to do! To sum up, you need to set the start and end slide for the insert music so that it could play repeatedly across slides. Now you should be able to set inserte music as PowerPoint background music easily!