Tech Reference

How to embed a YouTube video into your Microsoft PowerPoint presentations using a Mac or PC

Written by Dave Johnson
Updated
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Enriching a PowerPoint slideshow with charts, images, and videos can make any presentation more engaging. 

You can embed a locally stored video file in PowerPoint, but that makes the PowerPoint file very large and can cause performance problems.

A much better approach: Embed a link to a YouTube video instead. This has the same effect as adding a video from your computer, but will add virtually nothing to your PowerPoint's file size.

The exact way to do this depends on which version of PowerPoint you have. 

How to embed a YouTube video in PowerPoint 365

1. Find the video you want to embed on YouTube, and copy the entire URL from your PC or Mac computer's web browser address bar. 

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Copy the URL for the YouTube video that you want to embed.  Dave Johnson/Business Insider

2. In PowerPoint, click the "Insert" tab in the ribbon at the top of the screen.

3. Click "Video," and in the drop-down, choose "Online video…"

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Choose to insert online video from the Insert tab to add the video to your presentation.  Dave Johnson/Business Insider

4. In the Online Video dialog box, paste the URL of the YouTube video.

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Paste the video's URL into the dialog box.  Dave Johnson/Business Insider

You can apply a variety of effects to the video preview using the options in the Video Format tab in the ribbon. These options affect the video preview that appears in your slide before the video plays — they do not affect the video when it plays. 

How to embed a YouTube video in PowerPoint 2016

If you have Office 2016, the Online Video dialog box looks a little different, and you need to embed the video differently.

1. Find the video you want to embed on YouTube and copy the embed code that begins with "<iframe." To find that, click "Share," below the video's title, and then click "Embed." Copy the full Embed Video link. 

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Be sure you copy the full iframe embed code if you're using Office 2016.  Dave Johnson/Business Insider

2. In PowerPoint, click the "Insert" tab in the ribbon at the top of the screen.

3. Click "Video," and in the drop-down, choose "Online video…"

4. In the Online Video dialog box, paste the embed code into the From a Video Embed Code field.

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You can paste the embed code or search for a video using keywords.  Dave Johnson/Business Insider

You can also use the Search YouTube search box to find a video to embed directly from PowerPoint.

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dave june
Dave Johnson
Dave Johnson is a technology journalist who writes about consumer tech and how the industry is transforming the speculative world of science fiction into modern-day real life. Dave grew up in New Jersey before entering the Air Force to operate satellites, teach space operations, and do space launch planning. He then spent eight years as a content lead on the Windows team at Microsoft. As a photographer, Dave has photographed wolves in their natural environment; he's also a scuba instructor and co-host of several podcasts. Dave is the author of more than two dozen books and has contributed to many sites and publications including CNET, Forbes, PC World, How To Geek, and Insider.