A little music or a few sound effects may be the final elements it takes to set the right mood for your slides and to grab the audience’s attention.

It’s simple to add sound effects, music, or even narration for presentations that users might view on their own:

• Choose Insert | Movies And Sounds.
• Drop in a file from your drive or network, look for a type of file in the Clip Organizer (Office’s central clearinghouse for media files), or pick a track off a CD (be sure you have permission to use the song).

When you insert a sound, a speaker icon appears on the slide. As you’re inserting the file, PowerPoint lets you decide whether the sound will play automatically when the slide comes on-screen or start playing when you click the icon. If you choose to play the sound automatically, you don’t need anything to click, so you can drag the speaker icon off the slide to minimize clutter. (Do not, however, do something rash such as clicking the speaker icon and pressing the DELETE key. That removes the sound from your presentation.)

To assign the sound to a specific animation rather than the entire slide:

• choose Slide Show | Custom Animation.
• Click the appropriate animation on the right side of the screen and the arrow next to it, and then choose Effect Options.
• Sound drop-down menu lets you choose an effect; use the Other Sound option to pick a sound file from your drive.

 Change Options

To determine when a sound quits playing:

• Right-click the icon and choose Custom Animation..
• Click the arrow next to your media clip’s name and choose Effect Options.
• Choose to stop the sound when you click the mouse, when you change slides, or after a certain number of slides.
• Choose the Timing tab in this dialog box to set the sound to play automatically, but after a delay. This prevents the mood-shattering clumsiness of grabbing the mouse to manually click a speaker icon and play the sound. But you’ll need to perfect your timing so that the theme from “2001: A Space Odyssey” doesn’t cut you off mid-sentence.

To make a sound clip play in a loop (perhaps you want a tune to play throughout three slides), right-click the speaker icon and choose Edit Sound Object.

If you insert a CD track, a dialog box pops up with options for playing the track. Keep in mind that if you play a clip from a CD, the sound isn’t attached to the presentation, so you’ll need the physical CD during the presentation. (You can avoid this hassle by copying the song off the disc and into a digital file.) In fact, any sound file larger than 100KB, which is usually a sound clip of only a few seconds, is linked to your presentation by default rather than being inserted as part of the file. You can change this setting by

• Choosing Tools | Options | General tab.
• Adjust the number by using the arrows next to Link Sounds With File Size Greater Than.

  Record Narration

Narration proves handy for presentations you’ll distribute for individuals to view on their own, maybe as a training file or as a presentation at a trade show kiosk. If you record narration while giving a presentation live, you’ll have a record of the performance for your own review or for use by someone who missed the original presentation. As long as you’re a good presenter and repeat audience questions into the microphone before answering, your live narration recording also provides a record of what people asked about.

• Choose Insert | Movies And Sounds | Record Sound to add a narration clip to a single slide using your computer’s microphone.
• For full-fledged narration, choose Slide Show | Record Narration.
• Select the slide to start recording on, and click your way through the slides, speaking your narration as you go.
• To run the show without narration, choose Slide Show | Set Up Show, and click the box next to Show Without Narration.
• Remember that narration cancels any other sounds you may have added to slides..

Two final tips: Plan for appropriate amplification for any sounds you use. If your audience must strain to hear sound coming from your notebook’s small speakers, it’ll be distracted from your content, and you’ll look ill prepared. Also, remember that a little sound goes a long way. It’s easy to overdo it.