Creating an engaging and memorable presentation requires striking a balance between entertainment and information. To help you achieve this, try to craft your slide decks with a mix of images, videos, and audio snippets; instead of just plain text. It’s also a good idea to disable the speaker icon in PowerPoint for a more polished look. With these tips, you can make sure your audience is captivated throughout the entire presentation.
PowerPoint is the most powerful presentation tool around, and with time, its features and functions have become even more intuitive. However, not everyone knows how to use it properly. For instance, slides can be cluttered with lots of animations and sound effects that divert people’s attention away from your main message. In order to create effective PowerPoint presentations every time, make sure to avoid these distractions and focus solely on delivering the one clear message you want to communicate.
The Speaker Icon
The speaker icon in PowerPoint is designed to assist presenters with managing sound effects. It indicates where and when a sound has been applied in their deck, allowing them to accurately anticipate when it will play. Additionally, this icon can help identify if the sound clip has been set up to be played automatically or whether they need to start it manually.
The speaker icon offers a convenient way to access audio settings such as sound effects and other media settings. Utilizing this feature, presenters can easily modify sound properties when desired. Hovering over the icon reveals the sound settings in an expanded form.
To insert a sound effect in PowerPoint, go to the desired slide and click Insert -> Audio. Select the audio file stored on your computer. Once you have inserted it, the speaker icon will appear both in the edit view and presentation view (what your audience sees).
Hiding the Speaker Icon
The speaker icon can obstruct important visual information on a slide, which is why it can be advantageous to hide the icon. To do so, select the icon and two new tabs will appear in the Ribbon: Format and Playback. This should allow you to easily hide the speaker icon.
Go to Playback in your audio settings and activate the option marked “Hide During Show.” This will ensure that the speaker icon is not visible while in presentation mode. If sound effects are desired during the show, first set up how you would like them to play.
When you select a slide, you can configure the system to automatically initiate playback. You can set recurrence so that with one mouse click or keyboard key press, playback will begin when the given slide appears. This simplifies initiating presentations and helps keep your audience focused on the content.
