Playing a Video/Movie From Within PowerPoint 2007

I recently attended a two-hour public meeting where the speakers gave PowerPoint presentations. There were videos shown during the slide shows, usually less than a minute in length that depicted a humorous aspect of the topic being discussed. Being short and funny, the videos made a nice comic-relief.

To run a video, the speaker minimized PowerPoint and used another program to play it. Not only was the practice cumbersome, it was unnecessary. In other words, it is possible to run a video from within PowerPoint.

Use the following procedure to insert a movie into PowerPoint 2007.

1. Open the program.
2. Display the slides of the presentation.
3. Select the slide to receive the movie or create and select a new slide for the movie.
4. Click on the Insert tab.
5. Click on Movie in the Media Clips pane (far right on the Ribbon).
6. Click on Movie from File.
7. Click on the movie to insert.
8. Click OK.
9. In the dialog box, click on When Clicked.

To save the slide show with its movie (note: the movie MUST be saved in the same location as the slide show):

1. Click on the Office Button.
2. Click on Save As.
3. Choose either a:

• PowerPoint Presentation (opens in the PowerPoint program) or
• PowerPoint Show (opens in Slide Show view) or
• PowerPoint 97-2003 Presentation (some PowerPoint 2007 functions may be lost).
  
  

To view the movie within the slide show:

1. Run the slide show.
2. At the slide with the movie, click the movie area.
3. Click outside the movie area to stop the movie or to continue the slide show.