With the PowerPoint recording tool, you record the narrations one slide at a time. When you finish recording all slides, you create a video that combines all content into one video file. You can focus on one slide, or one idea, at a time.  This is in contrast to many other recording apps, in which you record the entire video at once. 

After finishing your project, you can return to it any time and edit any slide.  For example, a year after you record a lecture through PowerPoint, you might want to update content on a few of your slides.  You can easily update the recording or slide content to specific slides and create a new video. Below, you'll see step-by-step instructions, as well as a video demonstration.  

Creating a Video from your PowerPoint Presentation

  1. Open the PowerPoint presentation you’d like to work with.  Use the desktop version of PowerPoint, not the online version.   
  2. From the menu, select “Slide Show” and then “Record Slide Show”  
  3. Here, you can add annotations and narrations to each slide.   
  4. Available annotation tools are a laser pointer, pen, and highlighter 
  5. Select the slide you’d like to work with, select “record”, and begin your narration and annotations.     
    • It’s highly recommended to exclude your webcam video by clicking the camera icon. Excluding your webcam video will significantly reduce the time it takes to export the video.   
  6. When finished, select the stop button.  You can select the play button to re-play the recording and the trash button to delete it and start again.   
  7. Once satisfied with your recording, select the next slide. Add your recording to the next slide and repeat for each slide until complete.    
  8. When all slides are complete, select “end show”.  
  9. In the main PowerPoint menu, select “File” and “Export”.   
  10. Change the File Format to “MP4”, or your preferred video file, and make sure the “Use Recorded Timings and Narrations” box is selected.   
  11. Select “Export”. At the bottom of your screen, you will notice a bar showing the progress of your video export.  The more content included in your presentation, the longer it will take.   
  12. Now, you can locate your video file and upload it to a server like Echo 360 or One Drive to share.   

Editing your Video

  1. Open PowerPoint presentation  
  2. From the menu, select “Slide Show” and then “Record Slide Show”  
  3. Select the slide you’d like to edit.  Then select the trash button to remove existing narration and annotation.  
  4. Select the record button to record new narration and annotation.  
  5. Repeat as needed.  Once complete, select “end show” and export the video as an MP4 (see steps 8-10 above).  This will be your new video file.   

Demonstration