In addition to adding pictures, animation and sound to presentations in Microsoft PowerPoint, you can also add video content.

When you have your presentation open first select the slide in which you want to place your video. Then up in the top navigation click on the insert tab. In the media clips group select the arrow under movie and choose movie from file, then navigate to the file that you want, click on it to highlight the filename and then click OK.

Now, you’ll getting alert box that asks whether you want the movie to play automatically when you display the slide or if you want to click to start the movie. I’m going to choose the second option. If you choose one click the movie will play when you click the movie firm in your presentation. To preview the movie and to make sure it works, just click the slide show icon in the bottom right corner of your screen.

Everything looks good, so I’ll hit escape twice to go back to the normal view. Now, I’m going to insert an animated GIF file into a different slide, it’s pretty much the same process. First, I’ll select the thumbnail for the slide that I want to insert the GIF into and the back of the top I’ll select the insert tab then I’m going to go back to the media clips group and open the menu for movies. This time I’m going to use a file from the clip organizer, so I’ll select that option. You can choose which file types to search for by opening the drop down menu for the selected media file type. I’m going to select an animated GIF instead of a movie file, and then click Go.

Unless the files will appear here on the right in the clip add task pane. I can scroll through to find what I like or I can enter the name or keyword here in the search field, and then click Go again. Here I have another list of GIF files to choose from, so I’m going to select what I like and it will pop into my slide. Only the first frame of the animated GIF will be visible, so if you want to see it in action, click the slide show button again. Here’s the GIF in action, and then I’ll hit Escape to go back to the normal view.

When you’re selecting an animated GIF from the clip art organizer, you can also preview the animation just by clicking the down arrow for that thumbnail, then select to preview properties and the dialog box will open that shows how the animation looks in action. Then you can just click close and that’s how easy it is to add animated images and video content to a PowerPoint presentation.