How to Embed a YouTube Video in Microsoft PowerPoint

The Shift from Downloading to Streaming

In the past, if you wanted to show a video during a business presentation or a classroom lecture, you had to manually download the massive MP4 file to your computer’s hard drive and insert it directly into your slideshow. While this guaranteed the video would play offline, it resulted in PowerPoint files that were hundreds of megabytes in size, making them impossible to email to colleagues.

Today, because almost every conference room and classroom has high-speed Wi-Fi, the standard best practice is to simply embed a YouTube video. By embedding the video, your PowerPoint file remains incredibly small (often under 5MB) because the video itself stays hosted on YouTube’s servers. PowerPoint simply creates a “window” to stream the video directly onto your slide.

Here is exactly how to insert a YouTube video into Microsoft PowerPoint, ensuring it plays smoothly when you reach that slide.

How to Embed a YouTube Video in PowerPoint

This method works in all modern versions of Microsoft PowerPoint (including Microsoft 365, PowerPoint 2021, and PowerPoint 2019).

1. Open your web browser, go to YouTube.com, and find the video you want to use.
2. Look beneath the video player and click the Share button.
3. Click the Copy button to save the standard URL to your clipboard (e.g., https://youtu.be/...). Note: You do not need to use the complex HTML “Embed” code; PowerPoint only requires the standard web address.
4. Open your presentation in Microsoft PowerPoint.
5. Navigate to the specific slide where you want the video to appear.
6. Look at the ribbon menu at the top of the screen and click the Insert tab.
7. Look toward the far right side of the ribbon for the “Media” section and click on Video.
8. From the dropdown menu, select Online Video… (or “Online Movies…” on older Mac versions).
9. A dialogue box will appear on your screen. Paste the YouTube URL you copied earlier into the address box.
10. Wait a few seconds for PowerPoint to fetch the preview image from YouTube. Once the preview appears, click the Insert button.

A large rectangular black box (or the video’s thumbnail image) will appear on your slide. This is your embedded video player. You can click and drag the corners of this box to resize it, and you can move it anywhere on the slide just like a standard photograph.

How to Control Video Playback Settings

By default, when you advance to the slide during your presentation, the video will just sit there waiting for you to physically click on it with your mouse. For a smoother presentation, you can change the playback settings.

1. Click once on the video box on your slide to select it.
2. Look at the very top of the ribbon menu. You will see a new contextual tab appear called Playback (underneath “Video Tools”). Click on it.
3. Look for the setting labeled Start:.
4. Change the dropdown menu from “In Click Sequence” to Automatically.

Now, when you click the spacebar to transition to this slide, the YouTube video will immediately begin playing without requiring you to move your mouse over to the play button.

Important Limitations to Remember

Before you rely on an embedded YouTube video for a high-stakes presentation, you must understand two critical limitations:

1. You must have an active internet connection. Because the video is streaming from YouTube’s servers, it will not play if the conference room Wi-Fi goes down or if you are presenting offline. Always test the Wi-Fi connection in the presentation room before you begin speaking.
2. You cannot trim the video inside PowerPoint. If you insert a video file from your hard drive, PowerPoint allows you to crop the video to start at a specific timestamp. You cannot do this with online streaming videos. The video will always start from the very beginning. If you only want to show a 10-second clip from the middle of a 10-minute video, you will have to manually scrub forward on the timeline while presenting.