Sound effects, narrative clips, songs, or even entire soundtracks expands and enhances your slideshow — but the resulting speaker icon that appears whenever you insert an audio file usually winds up being an eyesore.

Fortunately, it’s just as easy to hide the icon as it is to insert a sound file. First, choose Insert | Movies And Sounds | Sound From File. Navigate to and select your audio file in the resulting Insert Sound dialog box and click OK. If a message box appears asking how you want the sound to start, click either Automatically or When Clicked (Yes or No in PowerPoint 2000/2002).

If you choose the latter option, you need to leave the icon visible on your slide. If you set your sound to play automatically, however, you can hide the icon by selecting it on your slide, and then simply dragging it off any side of the slide. Now, you can still see it and select it while in Normal view, but it won’t appear when you launch your presentation in Slide Show view.

Adapt for PowerPoint 2007
In PowerPoint 2007, go to the Insert tab, and in the Media Clips group, click the Sound button’s dropdown arrow. Choose Sound From File from the dropdown list. Navigate to your file, just as you would in earlier versions and insert the sound file.

Filed under: Microsoft Office Tutor