A reader asks:
"Recently I have received some PowerPoint slide shows that were just one slide, containing as many as eight graphics (or icons) on the slide. Whenever I click on the various graphics on the slide, a song plays. When I open the show in PowerPoint as a presentation, rather than a show, it only shows the one page and no links to the songs. I have tried to make a slide like this, but so far have failed. Can you shed some light on this issue?"
Answer:
A PowerPoint show file has an file extension of .PPSX (versions 2010/2007) or .PPS (version 2003 and earlier), while a presentation file has a file extension of .PPTX or .PPT.
The benefit of using WAV files for sound is that they then travel as part of the slide show when you email it. MP3 music files can be used on a slide also, but they must be sent in addition to the slide show file in order for the music to play. As you can imagine, this second method can be cumbersome.
The following articles will help you to "trick" PowerPoint into recognizing MP3 files as WAV files instead, in order to embed them into the presentation.
• Sound Problems in PowerPoint 2010
• Sound Problems in PowerPoint 2007
• Sound Problems in PowerPoint 2003
How the Sound Files are Applied and/or Retrieved
- The links from the slide to play the individual songs are made using invisible hyperlinks (also called invisible buttons). Learn how to create invisible links on your slides.
OR
- The technique used to make the graphic images clickable to play music may have been created using PowerPoint triggers.
- Oh, and one more thing. If you specifically want to use the music that is in the PowerPoint file that was sent to you, it is a quick and easy task to extract the music files from a presentation.