PowerPoint 2003 - Misc - Sound Files Do Not Get Copied When Copying Presentations

SUMMARY: If your distributed Microsoft PowerPoint 2003 presentations lack sound effects, try this tweak.

If you find that sound files in a Microsoft PowerPoint 2003 presentation do not get copied when you transfer the presentation from one computer to another, it is because PowerPoint normally only links large sound files to a presentation instead of embedding them.

By default, if you add a sound file greater than 100 KB, PowerPoint only establishes a link between the presentation and the large sound file. If you wish to copy the presentation with sound, you must also copy the original sound files along with the PPT presentation file.

However, if you find this process cumbersome, you can force Microsoft PowerPoint to embed larger sound files in your presentation. While this will increase the presentation's size and load time, it may make it easier to distribute presentations to others.

1. Click "Tools" - "Options".

2. When the "Options" dialog box appears, click the "General" tab.

3. Next to "Link sounds with file size greater than", enter an arbitrarily high number, such as 50000KB. This way, a sound file would have to be greater than 50 megabytes for it not to be embedded.

4. Click "OK" to save your changes.

5. Resave the presentation with now embedded sound.