HOW TO ADD NARRATION AND MAKE A MOVIE OF YOUR PPTX SLIDESHOW

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The instructions below work for PowerPoint version 16.41 that is part of Microsoft Office 2019. There might be some modifications needed for other versions.

If you use some software that interacts with your computer's sound system, something like "Boom," and you have audio troubles, you might want to try turning off that software. These apps don't always play well with PowerPoint. You should also be careful to check and double check your sound settings.

Just about everything you need is pretty clearly explained in the following Microsoft help pages. The first explains how to add narration to the slide show you created. The second explains how to export your presentation as a movie. You should save the talk as "MOV" rather than "MP4" since these prerecorded talks will be played on a Mac.

It takes several minutes to convert to a movie file. You should be able to watch progress in the bottom margin of the PowerPoint page. Your movie file should be reasonably small, for a 12 minute talk it should not be much more than 100MB, perhaps much smaller. If your movie file is significantly larger, download and use the open source app Handbrake. This is free and fairly transparent.

Helpful warning: Be sure that on the Slide Show page, you have checked "Play Narrations" if you are going to preview your talk by playing it within PowerPoint.