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It can be difficult to keep an audience’s attention during a lengthy presentation. In fact, 4 out of 5 professionals admit to shifting their focus away from the presenter during the last presentation they attended. One way to combat this is interactive elements. You can embed a YouTube video in PowerPoint to break up long stints of talking and create a more fun environment.
Though you can add a plain hyperlink to your presentation to open in the browser, that doesn’t look particularly professional. Instead, it makes sense to embed your video in PowerPoint so you can play it directly from the application. As an added benefit, the video’s thumbnail will appear for a more beautiful design.
Today, we’re going to show you how to embed a YouTube video in PowerPoint using two methods: its embed code and a URL. Both will give more or less the same results, so we recommend the latter unless you have a specific reason.
How to Embed a YouTube Video in PowerPoint Using Code
Using embed code to insert a YouTube video into PowerPoint is a little outdated, but it may provide some additional options. If you have an older version of PowerPoint, it may also be the only method that works. Here’s how you can do it:
- Click the “Share” button underneath your YouTube video
For the record, we don’t recommend that you embed YouTube wild animal videos in your presentation – that’s just a fun example.
- Click the “Embed” button
- Choose your embed options and copy the YouTube embed code
The code will display under the “Embed Video” title and start with
<iframe width
. Optionally, tick “Start at” to have the video begin at a specific section of the video.You can press the “Copy” button at the bottom of the pop-up to easily copy all the code.
- Insert a video into PowerPoint
In your PowerPoint ribbon, click the “Insert” tab, then click “Media” on the right-hand side and select “Video > Online Video…”.
- Paste your embed YouTube code into the search bar
Paste your YouTube embed code into the search bar underneath “Enter the address for the online video”. A preview of the video will display below it, at which point you can click “Insert”.
- Resize your YouTube video in PowerPoint
Unless you want your video to start playing in a tiny window, you should resize it. Bear in mind that you won’t be able to click the fullscreen button as you would on a normal YouTube video, so the size must reflect this.
Though your thumbnail will show up blurry on the editing screen, once you start presenting it will be crisp.
- Preview your video
Right-click the video and click “Preview” so you can check its start time, quality, and other factors.
How to Insert a YouTube Video in PowerPoint Using a URL
We can speed up the process to embed video in PowerPoint from YouTube by using just its URL rather than the embed code. This should work so long as you have a modern version of PowerPoint.
That’s all we have for you today. You should now know how to embed a YouTube video in PowerPoint using both the old and new methods. However, while you’re here you may want to consider learning to customize the PowerPoint ribbon for easier access or enable dark mode for PowerPoint.