How to Insert YouTube Videos in PowerPoint

If you have ever found yourself trying to play a video that you linked to from your PowerPoint presentation, whether in the classroom or at a conference, and it didn't work, keep on reading.  This guide by Amit Agarwal, a personal technology columnist and founder of Digital Inspiration, shares how to embed YouTube videos into PowerPoint slides.

Tutorial: Embed Web Videos in PowerPoint (for Office 2010)
Embed YouTube Videos Directly into PowerPoint

This is the easiest approach and recommended if are sure that the presentation venue will have great connectivity.  Download the YouTube Wizard plug-in here and upon installation, this will add a new "Insert YouTube Video" command to your PowerPoint Toolbar.



Insert YouTube videos to your PowerPoint presentations from the menu

You simply have to type the URL of the YouTube video and follow the wizard to add the YouTube video player in your current slide. You can resize as well as reposition the player anywhere on the slide.

Play YouTube Videos in PowerPoint without Internet

While the above solution works great, the only problem is that it streams live videos so an internet connection is required to playback the video during the slideshow. If you plan to deliver a presentation without internet, take the following approach.

First download the YouTube video locally in either Windows Media or AVI format since PowerPoint doesn't understand the default FLV or MP4 formats of YouTube.


Add YouTube videos for offline PowerPoint Presentations

You can either use Zamzar.com or MediaConverter.org to save any YouTube video as an AVI file – I prefer Media Converter since it supports in-browser conversion while Zamzar requires your email addressing where they send the link to converted video.

Once the video is saved as an AVI or WMV file on your computer, go to Insert –, Movie –, "Movie from file" to put the YouTube video in the current slide.


Get Videos from Google Docs into PowerPoint

Now consider another possible case – you spent lot of effect preparing an elaborate presentation inside Google Docs with several YouTube clips but how do you import all this into PowerPoint.

While Google Docs does provide an "Export as PPT" option, the problem with this format is that it converts all embedded YouTube clips into static images which is something you don't want.


Insert YouTube videos from Google Docs into PowerPoint

There's however a simple workaround – just publish that Google Docs presentation as an HTML slideshow and then insert it like a web page in PowerPoint using the liveweb plug-in. Thus you can play YouTube clips inside PowerPoint though they are part of your Google Docs presentation.

Another advantage of this approach is that if you change any of the clip in your original Google Docs presentation, it will be reflected in the PowerPoint presentation as well.