How to Embed a YouTube video into a PowerPoint presentation

Posted by Kisha, Studio Assistant

Before you can embed a YouTube video into a PowerPoint 2007 presentation, you'll need to make sure that the Developer tab is present on the PowerPoint ribbon. If this tab isn’t shown, you can add it quickly by performing the following steps. 

  

First, click on the Office button to open up the main menu of PowerPoint. At the very bottom of this menu is a button entitled PowerPoint Options. Click on this to continue.

Once the PowerPoint Options window opens, select the Popular category and put a check in the box next to Show Developer tab in the Ribbon. Click OK to exit, and the Developer tab will now be present on the PowerPoint ribbon. 

Navigate to the slide where you wish to add the YouTube video. Open the Developer tab and click on the More Controls button.

The More Controls window will now open and display a long list of controls that you can add to your PowerPoint presentation. Scroll through the list and select Shockwave Flash Object.

Click OK to continue. Next, use your cursor to draw a rectangular image somewhere on the slide. This rectangular object will eventually hold the YouTube video, so try to draw it accordingly. You can adjust it later if needed. 

With the rectangular object still selected, click on Properties in the Developer tab of the ribbon. This will open a Properties window for the Shockwave Flash Object. You may need to resize this window in order to better see all the field properties.

In this Properties window, we’ll have to make a few changes and additions to embed our YouTube video. First, add the URL of the YouTube video to the Movie field. For example, this is the URL of a YouTube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27mxaePkYB4

Once you have pasted the URL in the Movie field, delete the “watch?” text. Then, replace the “=” that follows the “v” with a “/” character. The resulting URL would look like this:

http://www.youtube.com/v/27mxaePkYB4

You may also choose to make other changes in the Properties window, depending on how you want your video to play. You can change the Loop field to False if you only want the video to play through one time. In addition, you can change the Playing field to False if you’d rather manually start the video than have it automatically begin to play when the slide is shown. Once you’ve finished making your modifications here, click on the “x” in the upper right-hand corner of the window to close it. All of your changes will be saved.

To check that you’ve set up everything correctly, hit F5 to preview your presentation. Remember that you need to have an internet connection in order for the YouTube video to be played.