I lost the sound from the clip art sound bites I added.

[Brigadier]

I used sound bites(musical) from clip art in my powerpoint presentation.
After saving the working on the presentation and saving changes for about a
week, I opened it up one day and it wouldn't play certain sounds. The error
message said that is was unable to locate linked multimedia file etc. What
does that mean and what happened?

 

[David Marcovitz]

I don't know if I have a good solution for you, but I do have an
explanation. In PowerPoint, sounds that are not WAV files (many clip art
sounds are not), and WAV files that are "large" are linked to the
presentation, not embedded within it. That means that the sound file
itself is an external file. If that file moves or disappears, the sound
will not play because PowerPoint can't find it. The main way to get
around this is to put the sound file in the same folder as your
PowerPoint presentation before inserting it. Of course, this is annoying
with clip art sounds because you expect to be able to insert them and
have them work. That is why I hate clip art sounds. You could go looking
around your hard drive for the clip art sounds and move them to the same
folder as your presentation and then use Insert > Movies and Sounds >
From File, instead of clip art. Then, if the presentation moves, just be
sure to move the sound file(s) with it (keep them all in the same
folder).

In your case, the sound files must have either disappeared or been
moved, or the presentation moved as is no longer in the same relative
location as the presentation. However, it happened, it is really
annoying. Did I mention that I hate clip art sounds for this very reason?

--David

 

[Brigadier]

Thanks. That sucks 'cause now I have to redo this entire 1 hour
presentation. I did know about keeping music/sounds with the file. I did
that with the long (up to 12 minutes) pieces of music. I did not think these
little "blips" would do that. Good thing this happened now. I had put
everything on a CD already (the one on my computer is the one which I
discovered this today) for a six-year-old. Poor kid would have been really
bummed. Well, back to the drawing board and redesign. I did try to find the
sounds on the "C" drive and I did not. I have found them again on line in
the clip art gallery. I tried to copy them over to the file and they
wouldn't go. If there is something I'm missing here... let me know...
otherwise I just find new "music" for these areas. Thanks again.

 

[Michael Koerner]

How are you trying to copy the on line files? Make sure that all your sound
files are in the same folder as your presentation before you insert them
into the presentation. This will help in keeping the links from breaking,
when you move the presentation. If your going to be putting all this on to a
CD you might look at making an Autorun CD see here
Make an AutoRun CD
http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00037.htm


--
Michael Koerner
MS MVP - PowerPoint


Thanks. That sucks 'cause now I have to redo this entire 1 hour
presentation. I did know about keeping music/sounds with the file. I did
that with the long (up to 12 minutes) pieces of music. I did not think
these
little "blips" would do that. Good thing this happened now. I had put
everything on a CD already (the one on my computer is the one which I
discovered this today) for a six-year-old. Poor kid would have been really
bummed. Well, back to the drawing board and redesign. I did try to find
the
sounds on the "C" drive and I did not. I have found them again on line in
the clip art gallery. I tried to copy them over to the file and they
wouldn't go. If there is something I'm missing here... let me know...
otherwise I just find new "music" for these areas. Thanks again.

 

[Brigadier]

Thanks! When I copy, everything comes over fine except the musical "blips" I
pulled off of clip art. Interestingly enough, the short sound effects play
fine, it's the ones that last a few more seconds that quit. The music I
pulled off the CDs I used came over and play fine. I checked out your site
you gave me. I'm using 2003. I'll try adding those lines in notes and see
if anything improves.