PowerPoint lets you play your audio files from a certain point within the clip using the Bookmarks option. Bookmarks in PowerPoint are similar to the conventional bookmarks you place within the pages of a book you read. In the same way that you can easily access a particular page with the help of a bookmark, the Bookmark option within an audio clip becomes an indicator of the position from where you want to play the clip.
You can then access that position quickly within the audio clip without having to manually scrub within the Player Controls bar. In addition, you can also combine Bookmarks with Trigger animations so as to trigger a click to play an audio clip precisely from the Bookmark you added.
Follow these steps to learn how to add a Bookmark to your audio clip in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows:
- Open your presentation, and navigate to the required slide where you have already inserted an audio clip. Select or double-click the audio clip to bring up the two contextual Audio Tools tabs in the Ribbon. These two tabs are Format and Playback. Click the Playback tab to activate it, as shown highlighted in blue within Figure 1, below.
Figure 1: Audio Tools Playback tab of the Ribbon Contextual Tabs
- The two contextual tabs in Audio Tools are Format and Playback. Contextual tabs are special tabs in the Ribbon that are not visible all the time. They only make an appearance when you are working with a particular slide object which can be edited using special options.
- Now, ascertain where you want to add the Bookmark. There are three ways to do so:
- Click the Play button, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 1, above, to play the audio clip. Doing so causes the Play button to change into the Pause button. Then, pause at the position where you want to add a bookmark, as shown in Figure 2, below.
- Scrub the audio by dragging within the Player Controls bar, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 2, below, to the exact position you want.
- Click inside the Player Controls bar, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 2, below, and then use the Move Forward and Move Back buttons, as shown highlighted in blue within Figure 2, to fine-tune the position where you want to add the Bookmark.
- Using any of the three ways explained above, you get to the position on the Player Controls bar where you want to add a new Bookmark, as shown in Figure 2, below.
Figure 2: Audio paused to add a Bookmark - Now, select the Audio Tools Playback tab of the Ribbon, and click the Add Bookmark button, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 3, below.
Figure 3: Add Bookmark button within the Bookmarks group - This action adds a Bookmark, represented by a yellow dot on the audio timeline within the Player Controls bar to indicate the bookmark's location, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 4, below.
Figure 4: Bookmark added to the audio - Once you start playing the audio to preview, or even if you scrub again, you will find that your Bookmark added in the preceding step shows a white dot rather than a yellow dot, as shown in Figure 5, below. This indicates that the Bookmark is no longer selected. To select it again, click on the white dot, which will turn yellow again to indicate that it has been selected.
Figure 5: Bookmark no longer active within the Player Controls bar - You can add as many Bookmarks as you like. The selected Bookmark is always highlighted with a yellow dot, as shown in Figure 6, below.
Figure 6: Selected Bookmark depicts a yellow dot within the Player Controls bar - Once you are done with adding bookmarks, you can play the slide in Slide Show view. Hover your cursor over the audio icon to see the Player Controls bar containing the Bookmarks. You can see all the four bookmarks we added in Figure 7, below.
Figure 7: Bookmarks within Slide Show view - Assuming you are still in Slide Show view, you can click on any of the Bookmarks to select it, and then click the Play button to run the audio clip from that position onwards.
- Make sure to save your presentation often.
