Record a Slideshow with Narration and Slide Timings

Advice from the Microsoft Office Website

Audio narrations and timings can enhance a Web-based or self-running slide show. If you’re planning to create a video with your presentation, using narrations and timings is a great way to make it less static. You can use audio narration to archive a meeting, so that presenters or absentees can review the presentation later and hear any comments made during the presentation.

Learn About Narration

• Audio narrations and timings can enhance a Web-based or self-running slide show. If you’re planning to create a video with your presentation, using narrations and timings is a great way to make it less static. You can use audio narration to archive a meeting, so that presenters or absentees can review the presentation later and hear any comments made during the presentation.
• You can record a narration before or during a slide show and include audience comments in the recording. If you don’t want narration throughout the presentation, you can record comments only on selected slides or turn off the narration so that it plays only when you want it to play.
• When you add a narration to a slide, a sound icon Audio appears on the slide. As with any sound, you can either click the icon to play the sound or set the sound to play automatically.
• To record and hear a narration, your computer must be equipped with a sound card, microphone, and speakers.
• Before you start recording, PowerPoint prompts you to record either just the slide timings, just the narrations, or both at the same time. You can also set the slide timings manually. Slide timings are especially useful if you want the presentation to run automatically with your narration. Recording slide timings will also record the times of animation steps and the use of any triggers on your slide. You can turn the slide timings off when you don’t want the presentation to use them.
• In this process, what you record is embedded in each slide, and the recording can be played back in Slide Show. A video file is not created by this recording process. However, if you need one, you can turn your presentation into a video with a few extra steps.

Record Narration

• When you record a narration, you run through the presentation and record each slide. You can pause and resume recording any time.
• Ensure your microphone is set up and in working order prior to recording your slideshow.
• On the Slideshow tab, in the Setup group, click Record Slide Show
• Select one of the following: Start Recording from Beginning | Start Recording from Current Slide
• In the Record Slide Show dialog box, select the Narrations and laser pointer check box, and if appropriate, select or clear the Slide and animation timings check box.
• Click Start Recording. TIP: To pause the narration, in the Recording shortcut menu, click Pause. To resume your narration, click Resume Recording.
• To end your slide show recording, right-click the slide, and then click End Show.
• The recorded slide show timings are automatically saved. You can see the timing in Slide Sorter view below each slide.

Preview Narration

• In Normal view, on the slide, click the sound icon
• On the ribbon, under Audio Tools, on the Playback Tools tab, in the Preview group, click Play.

Record Comments

• In Normal view, click the slide that you want to add a comment to.
• On the Insert tab, in the Media group, click the arrow under Audio, and then click Record Audio
• To record the comment, click Record, and start speaking.
• When you are finished recording, click Stop.
• In the Name box, type a name for the sound, and then click OK.

Set Slide Timing

• PowerPoint automatically records your slide timings when you add narration, or you can manually set the slide timings to accompany your narrations.
• In Normal view, click the slide that you want to set the timing for.
• On the Transitions tab, in the Timing group, under Advance Slide, select the After check box, and then enter the number of seconds that you want the slide to appear on the screen. Repeat the process for each slide that you want to set the timing for.

Turn Slide Timing Off

• Turning off the slide timings does not delete them. You can turn the timings back on at any time without having to recreate them. However, when the slide timings are turned off, your slides won’t automatically advance when you record a narration, and you will need to manually advance the slides.
• In Normal view, on the Slideshow tab, in the Setup group, click Setup Slideshow.
• Under Advance slides, click Manually.

Deleting

The Clear command is for deleting timings or narration from your recording that you don’t want or that you want to replace. There are four different Clear commands that allow you to:

• Delete the timings on the currently selected slide
• Delete the timings on all slides at once
• Delete the narration on the currently selected slide
• Delete the narration on all slides at once
• If you do not want to delete all the timings or narration in your presentation, open a specific slide that has a timing or narration that you do want to delete.
• On the Slide Show tab of the PowerPoint ribbon, on the Record Slide Show button, click the down arrow, point to Clear, and then choose the appropriate Clear command for your situation.