If you’re sending out your presentation instead of giving it in front of an audience, but you feel adding a vocal explanation would better help to deliver the message, record a voiceover narration. Here’s how to do it. First, you’ll need a microphone. Most modern computers have a built-in microphone that gets the job done, but investing in a USB microphone will increase the audio quality of the narration by quite a bit. The built-in microphone will be set as your input device by default, so if you plan on using it for the PowerPoint narration, you don’t need to take any additional steps in setting it up. However, if you plan to use a USB microphone for the narration, be sure to set it as the input device.
To do this on Windows, right-click the volume icon found on the right of the taskbar. In the menu that appears, select “Open Sound Settings.”
The “Sound Settings” window will appear. Here, scroll down to the “Input” section and click the box under “Choose your input device.”If you’re using a USB microphone, it will appear here. Select it to set it as the input device.
In this example, we’ll choose “Record from Beginning.”
Now, you’ll be in full-screen mode. You’ll notice a few extra tools appear, including a record button at the top-left corner of the screen. When you’re ready to start recording, click this button.
When you select the record button, a countdown timer will appear, giving you a three-second delay between clicking the button and starting your recording.You can now start recording your voiceover narration! Continue through the presentation by clicking the right arrow to go to the next slide.You can pause the recording at any time by pressing the pause button in the top-left corner of the window. The recording will automatically end when you make it to the last slide. Alternatively, you can press the stop button, also located at the top-left corner of the screen.If you want to play your narration back, you can select the replay button.A speaker icon will appear at the bottom-right corner of each slide that has a recorded narration. You can also play your narration back on each slide by hovering over the icon and pressing the play button.If you’re not satisfied with the narration, simply repeat these steps to re-record.
