Why no sound track using PowerPoint 2004 for Mac?

[Guest]

When I use PowerPoint to play a slide show I downloaded from an email, the
accompanying sound (music) does not play. There is silence. The music plays
ok on a PC, but not on my Mac, even though the sound is on and every other
sound is ok. This is true of all slide shows which I KNOW have music
accompanyment. Is ther a problem with my settings, or is this a known lack in
my product, or what?

 

[Austin Myers]

What sort of file is the sound track? (wav, mp3, etc?)


Austin Myers
MS PowerPoint MVP Team

Provider of PFCPro, PFCMedia and PFCExpress
www.playsforcertain.com

 

[Guest]

I don't know. What I received was a .pps attachment to an email, which I
downloaded and played as a slide show using PowerPoint. Silence. The video
was fine. When I forwarded the email to a PC, they downloaded it and played
it with PowerPoint as a slide show. The sound was there. Is it maybe my
Preferences, or what?

 

[Austin Myers]

If the file is a WMA it is not supported by Apple. Sorry..


Austin Myers
MS PowerPoint MVP Team

Provider of PFCPro, PFCMedia and PFCExpress
www.playsforcertain.com

 

[Guest]

Maybe it is a WMA file, in which case I guess that's the end of it. But how
do I tell? Nothing seems to give any clues as to the type of sound file that
is included in the .pps show. Is there any way I can tell? Alternatively, I
can email the .pps file to an inbox if I have an email address. Mine is
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

I don't know. What I received was a .pps attachment to an email, which I
downloaded and played as a slide show using PowerPoint. Silence. The video
was fine. When I forwarded the email to a PC, they downloaded it and played
it with PowerPoint as a slide show. The sound was there. Is it maybe my
Preferences, or what?

A couple of questions:

You received just the PPS, no other files?

Aside: that seems unlikely, since you mention that the video works, and videos
are never embedded, suggesting that there'd be linked files, so you got more than
just the PPS.

When you forward the file to your PC using friend, do you forward just the PPS or
that plus other files?

 

[Guest]

I received (and therefore forwarded) ONLY one file, the .pps file. There was
no separate sound file (or any other accompanying file). The music was
apparently somehow incorporated into the .pps file.

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

The sound may be an MP3 file masquerading as a WAV. That'll work on PCs but
apparently doesn't on Macs.

Actually, that is the case. Despite the scolding (though I hope not scalding) reply
to your email, I did have a look at the file. I extracted the WAV sound and on
opening it in Audacity, got a message about "Importing MP3 file".

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

A bit more followup ...

The sound in the PPT was indeed embedded and was an MP3 masquerading as a WAV.

I opened it in Audacity (free download from SourceForge.net ... google Audacity for a
link) and saved back out as a WAV. It got way bigger but after substituting the newly
saved WAV in PPT in place of the previous one, it plays on Mac now.

Since the file was embedded, it was not a linking problem.

It seems that Mac PPT can't play MP3s in WAV clothing such as you'd get by using CDEX
on WAV files, although the Mac on its own can play the things ... I copied the
original WAV to the Mac desktop; doubleclicking it there launched it in Quicktime
player, where it played.

Go figure.