Audio Styles in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

When you select an audio clip in PowerPoint, you will see two extra contextual tabs on the Ribbon. One of these tabs is the Audio Tool Playback tab that defines how your inserted audio will play—whether it will play automatically, or will it play audio across slides? Let's assume that you want your audio to play as a background score across multiple slides. Typically you would have to make four separate choices as explained in a separate tutorial, but PowerPoint's Audio Styles feature lets you automatically apply these four settings at once!

Follow these steps to explore the Audio Styles in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows:

1. Open a presentation which already has an audio clip inserted. Select the audio clip, as shown in Figure 1, below.
2. 
   Figure 1: Audio Tools Playback tab of the Ribbon
2. Doing so brings up the Audio Tools Format and Playback tabs. Click the Playback tab to activate it, as shown highlighted in blue within Figure 1, above.

Contextual Tab

The Audio Tools Format and Audio Tools Playback tabs are Contextual tabs. 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.
3. Within this tab, access the Audio Styles group, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 1, previously on this page. You'll find two options explained below:

No Style

4. This button is selected by default. Click this button to remove any applied Audio Style from your inserted audio.

Play in Background

5. Click this button to apply the four settings to play the audio across the multiple slides with just one click.
6. 
   Figure 2: Check-boxes are selected
7. Note that when the Play in Background button is clicked, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 2, above, then, these settings change, as shown highlighted in blue within Figure 2.
8. The changes that take place are:
9. Start option is set to Automatically,
   Play Across Slides is selected,
   Loop until Stopped is selected, and
   Hide During Show check-box is also selected.
4. Note that you can also select the No Style button, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 3, below. This action with ensure that all options swap back to their defaults, as shown highlighted in blue within Figure 3. In Figure 1, shown previously on this page, you can see the default status of these settings.
5. 
   Figure 3: Check-boxes not selected
5. Make sure to save your presentation often.