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Making a picture slide show, and want to add music. Nothing special, just like what you've seen in weddings.25 mins total length, 6 sec seach slide. I read the Help section: Insert - Movies & Sound - Sound from file.I want the music song to start from slide one. Problem: The slide show will not continue until the song is finish (4 mins later).Question: What am I doing wrong? I try to play with some setting and did not have any success.Goal: To put many 5 songs playing in the background while all the slides are playing.TIA

MOS Master here to help. This info is for PowerPoint 2003. I'm assuming your sound object has been inserted into slide 1. Right-click on the sound object and select "Custom Animation..." from the shortcut menu. On the right frame for Custom Animation, click the drop-arrow next to the animation box for your object, then select "Timing..." On the "Play Sound" dialog box that displays, select the Effect tab. In the section titled "Stop playing", click the "After" radio button, then change the number of slides to the total number of slides in your presentation.(Optional, if you haven't already done it)While still in the "Play Sound" dialog box, click the Sound Settings tab and then click the checkbox to "Hide sound icon during slide show"Click OK and try your slide show now. The music should play throughout. Feel free to send me an IM if you have more questions.

Just a side-note,One of the cool things you can do when running a slide show with background music is to sync it up by using the "Rehearse Timings" feature.Once you've got the music playing constantly (per settings shown in prev. post), select "Slide show Rehearse Timings" from the main menu. The full slide show will display and record each slide transition and animation. You can then adjust your timings to go with cues in the music. In my experience, you want to click just ahead of each cue; it may take a couple of runthroughs to make it right. When done, it will save the timings, which you can manually edit later.

Thak you, thank you.I worked great. Although I did not "rehearse timing." It's doing exactly what I want it to do. I'll try and play with the other part you mentioned later.I spent 6 hours on Sunday trying to figure this out.Thanks

You're welcome. I seem to recall banging my head against the keyboard for a few hours the first time I tried doing this years ago. Still have the scars to show for it.

Two more questions:1. When I did the test and add music from my PC, it worked fine, like I mentioned above. The music I used was from a downloaded mp3 file. However, I need to add the actual music (not test) to the slide show from an audio CD. I copy the songs from the Disc to the PC, it still ask me to "play it from disc." 2. I need to send this slide show (with music) to another person that will play it on their PC. I made a copy of the powerpoint file on a disc. I used by test sample with the mp3 music file on my PC at work. The slide show plays, but not the music. Does the music file have to be on the PC that is playing the slide show? Is there anyway to include it together so I can copy it all on one disc?

Before you load your mp3 file into your slideshow presentation, make sure the mp3 is in the same folder as the presentation. Then load it into the presentation as you have done before. Now, when you write this file to disk (or CD preferably), be sure to copy both files - the ppt file and the mp3 file. This should work out for you so long as they are always in the same folder.You place it in the same folder so that PowerPoint doesn't reference folders that are very specific to your computer.And as it is staed above, the music file does need to be on the PC (or more specifically in the same location as the ppt show) that is playing the show. If you choose to run it off the CD (I'd test that first), it only needs to be on the CD.

All done. Thanks. Just one more idea that I have not tried, but just popped into my mind at work.Can I loop the entire slideshow presentation? So it'll play over and over?TIA

On the menu bar go to Slideshow, select Set Up Show, and in the box you are looking for Loop Continuously Until 'Esc' on the left side near the middle of the box under the Show Options area.

Sorry I missed your followup questions (out of town), but looks like engineertwin2 was able to help. Hope the show goes well!

All done. Thank you both.