Participants in our Microsoft PowerPoint training often ask me how to embed a YouTube video in PowerPoint.
A carefully curated video can help your audience understand a concept more fully, provide additional context, and add excitement to your presentation.
PowerPoint for Microsoft 365 (and PowerPoint 2019) let you easily embed an online video from YouTube or Vimeo into your presentation. The video plays directly from the website so you need to be connected to the Internet for this to work.
In this article we’ll outline two ways to embed a YouTube video in PowerPoint.
Method #1: Embed an Online Video in PowerPoint with a Link
You can embed a video in PowerPoint from YouTube, Vimeo, or SlideShare with a link is easy. The online video in PowerPoint plays directly from the website and it has all of the site’s controls for playing, pausing, volume, and so on.
Here’s what you do.
- Go to the website and locate the video that you want.
- Click in your browser’s address bar and copy the URL.
- Switch back to PowerPoint, select Video in the Insert > Media group then click Online videos…
- Paste the URL into the Online Video dialog box then click Insert.
Method #2: Insert an Online Video in PowerPoint Using an Embed Code
Inserting a YouTube video in PowerPoint using an embed code lets you customize the video’s attributes using YouTube’s API parameters.
The process is similar to inserting a video into PowerPoint with a URL but you copy and paste the embed code instead.
- Go to the website and locate the video that you want.
- Click Share, then select Embed, and copy the embed code.
- Switch back to PowerPoint, select Video in the Insert > Media group then click Online videos…
- Paste the embed code into the Online Video dialog box then click Insert.
Embed a YouTube Video with Start and End Times
If you want to embed a YouTube video in PowerPoint and specify start and end times, just copy and past the following string into your embed code after the URL for the video.
?start=10&end=20
The start and end times are expressed in seconds. The example, below, would start playing the YouTube video at the 10 second mark and end after 20 seconds.
Will You Use Video in PowerPoint?
Now that you know how to insert a video into PowerPoint, will you embed video in your presentations?
Using a carefully curated YouTube video can help your audience become more engaged with your PowerPoint presentation without the increased file size that comes with a local video file.
If you have found this article useful, you may want to check out How to Insert a PDF into PowerPoint.
