Additional Video Capabilities Have Been Added to the Online Version of Microsoft PowerPoint

For many years, PowerPoint has made it possible to use movies in presentations; but, the web app has not been able to match the capability of the desktop version. Microsoft has released an update in the hopes of rectifying this situation.

Microsoft has announced, via a post on its corporate blog, that the web-based version of PowerPoint now allows users to upload movies for use in presentations. Before this update, the web app was only capable of embedding films that were hosted on third-party websites like YouTube. To select a file, you need to click the Insert tab located on the ribbon toolbar, then click the Video dropdown menu, and choose the option labeled “Video from device.” It’s only been a few days since PowerPoint on the web got automatic formatting for lists, and now this has happened.

You are still restricted to uploading videos that are no larger than 256 megabytes in size, but that ought to be sufficient for the majority of presentations. If you really need a 4K video or an extended length video in one of your slides, uploading an unlisted video to YouTube is probably going to work better anyway. PowerPoint on the web is able to identify MOV, WMV, AVI, M4V, MKV, ASF, and TS files in addition to MP4 movies, which Microsoft advises using instead.

According to Microsoft, the new function is still being rolled out, so if you don’t see it in your browser just yet, keep an eye out for it in the near future.

Source: Microsoft 365 Insider Blog