How to insert that funny clip you found online

Hey everyone, my name is Allen Huang, and I’m one of the Program Managers that works on multimedia in PowerPoint. Although we’re busy working on the next version of PowerPoint, I wanted to take some time to share with you a neat trick I’ve learned in PowerPoint 2007. It also works in older versions of PowerPoint, but I’m going to focus on showing how it works in 2007.

PowerPoint users are often asking how to get their YouTube or MSN SoapBox videos into PowerPoint. It takes a little bit of work to get it in, but now you can have “History of Dance” playing in your presentation too.

There a few setup steps before we get into actually inserting that video:

Make sure you have the Adobe Flash Player installed on your computer

If you’re watching videos on YouTube, you probably already have Adobe Flash Player installed. Otherwise, go to http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/ to download it.

Enable the Developer tab

Look for the Developer tab on your ribbon. If it’s not already there, go to the Office menu, where you’ll find a “PowerPoint options” button on the bottom. Select this button to get a dialog box like the one below.

Check the “Show Developer tab in Ribbon” checkbox. After you close this dialog, the Developer tab should appear on your ribbon.

Find the web address for the video you want to put in PowerPoint

The web provides tons of websites that supply user-created, user-uploaded video. YouTube is probably the most popular, but MSN Soapbox, MetaCafe, and DailyMotion are other examples of sites like YouTube. Once you find the video, look for the “Embed code” that allows you to embed a video on a blog or another webpage.

The screenshots below show a couple places where you might find this.

Once you’ve copied this code, paste it in Notepad or any other text editor. I’ve highlighted the two snippets you’ll need below:

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/dMH0bHeiRNg&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/dMH0bHeiRNg&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

The two places where you’ll find the URL that you need are bolded in the above example. Most of the time you’ll find this URL after “value=” or “embed src=”. Hold onto that URL (http://www.youtube.com/v/dMH0bHeiRNg&hl=en&fs=1), because that’s what we’ll need to make this work in PowerPoint. put in PowerPoint to insert the video.

For MSN Soapbox, the parts you’ll need are a little different. Again, the parts you’ll need are highlighted :

<embed src="http://images.video.msn.com/flash/soapbox1_1.swf" width="432" height="364" id="p6vu3jr0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowFullScreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" pluginspage="http://macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" flashvars="c=v&v=be9075bb-df0a-41c9-8d86-7ded46627e26&ifs=true&fr=msnvideo&mkt=en-US"></embed><noembed><a href="http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=be9075bb-df0a-41c9-8d86-7ded46627e26" target="_new" title="Bill Gates&#39; Last Day - CES Clip">Video: Bill Gates&#39; Last Day - CES Clip</a></noembed>

In this case, you’ll need to get the URL after src=”, but you’ll also need the flashvars. All you need to do is add a “?” after the src URL and add the flashvars, like below:

http://images.video.msn.com/flash/soapbox1_1.swf?c=v&v=be9075bb-df0a-41c9-8d86-7ded46627e26&ifs=true&fr=msnvideo&mkt=en-US

What to do once you’re in PowerPoint

Now that all of that’s out of the way, go to the Developer tab and pick the “More controls” dialog (the icon looks like a little hammer/wrench icon).

In this dialog, select “Shockwave Flash Object” and hit OK. Your cursor should be a crosshair now, and you can draw the size for the video. When you let go, there’ll be a box with an X through it. Then select “Properties” from the Developer tab, you’ll get a second dialog that provides lots of options for this Flash object.

Paste the embed code in the blank “Movie” property, and then press Enter. Now when you enter slideshow, the video should appear, and you should be able to interact with it like you would on the website you got it from.

What you’re doing in PowerPoint is inserting an ActiveX control in PowerPoint, which allows you to host other applications in PowerPoint. In the list of “More controls”, you’ll find a Windows Media Player ActiveX control, an Adobe Reader control, and many others that you can manipulate using the “Properties” dialog.

A few additional notes

• If you’re presenting with the video, be sure you have an Internet connection, and be prepared for any loading times there might be.
• Although you’ll see an EmbedMovie property in the Properties list for the Shockwave Flash Player, it will not actually embed the movie in your presentation. You should ignore that setting.
• Due to differences in the file formats, if you’re going to be creating this file in PowerPoint 2007 and then distributing it to someone using an earlier version of PowerPoint, be sure to save as .PPT.

Enjoy Rickrolling your friends in PowerPoint! Reply back and let us know how it works for you!