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How to make automatic Powerpoint slides for a song

You want to sing a song with kids, so you want to project the words and play the backing track or even the full track alongside it. But you don’t want to have to keep clicking to move slides because you’ll be doing the motions / actions. What can you do?
Don’t worry – help is at hand. With powerpoint you can ‘teach’ the slideshow your timings so that the slides will advance automatically at exactly the right time.
Don’t forget, the words and music recordings here at MGBT are copyright material, so you can only use these slideshows or videos in accordance with copyright. You can use them at church or with your kids club - but you can't share them or give or sell them to someone else. If you have a CCLI licence, please report the use of the words and music online with them.
For an example, let’s use “God’s Word is the Bible”
Here are the lyrics:

God's Word is the Bible.
The Bible is God's Word!
It's living and active in us today,
sharper than a two-edged sword!
So we're gonna get it open,
we're gonna see what it says.
We're gonna let God speak
into our lives.
Will we do it?
The answer's (shout)YES!
David Heath-Whyte, Copyright © 2005 Maynard's Groovy Bible Tunes www.maynardsgroovytunes.co.uk

Step 1 – Make the lyrics slides

I usually use big letters and get about one or two sentences per slide.
Use the “Title and Content” layout for a lyrics slide

image of powerpoint app showing layout of title and content
Type in the song name in the title box

Copy the lyrics from the MGBT Website Jukebox page.
Paste the first two lines in

Change the font to Century Gothic (it’s child friendly). Remove the bullet points
Resize text, paragraphs, text boxes to suit how you want it to look
image of powerpoint app showing completed first slide of lyrics Copy this slide as the basis of all the other text slides

(in my example I’ve only done the song once through – you’ll need to copy and paste the slides for another one-and-a-half times through for the full song)

image of powerpoint app showing several completed lyrics slides

Step 2 – Add the copyright notice

image of powerpoint app showing copyright line being added
You can copy and paste this onto one slide, format it at the bottom, and then copy and paste that onto all slides (expert users could use the View > Slide Master to achieve something similar)

Step 3 – Make a title slide

This will be the slide that displays until you’re ready to start the song. I usually just copy the first lyrics slide so that the kids can see the first words they’re going to sing. I add a “play” button to show myself it’s the first slide. Insert > Shapes > (near the bottom)
image of powerpoint app showing play symbol being added

Step 4 – Add the music to the second slide

Not the title slide. We add it to the second slide and get it to play automatically. This way you can show the title slide, talk about the song, and then hit space (or click your remote) when you want the song to start.

Insert > Media > Audio
image of powerpoint app showing how to add audio to a slide Choose the options:
Start: Automatically; Play across slides; Hide during Show; Rewind after playing

image of powerpoint app showing the audio options to choose

Step 5 – Add the timings

Slide Show > Rehearse Timings
image of powerpoint app showing the rehearse timings button on the slide show tab
As soon as you click this, the show will start.
Don’t worry about how long you spend on the ‘title’ slide, what matters is that once you hit ‘space’ or click the screen for the next slide and the music starts, you click to move each slide on in time with the music.
image of powerpoint app showing what the slide show looks like when rehease timings is clicked
When you’re done, looking at the slides in “slide sorter” view will show the timings that have been given to each slide.
I take the timing off the first slide – you don’t know how long you’ll talk to introduce the song – and the last slide – because it doesn’t matter to me if the last words stay up.
image of powerpoint app showing the slide sorter display and the slide timings
To do this, select Transitions, and un-tick the ‘Advance Slide after’ box:

Step 6 – save your work, and play the slides!

Now you can save the show, and just show it when you want to sing the song.
If you’re singing several songs in a row, you can copy and paste each song’s set of slides into a new show, in sequence.

Advanced Step for Holiday Clubs

Suppose you’re singing 10 songs at a Holiday Club, at different times and in different orders each day?
Make up a Powerpoint Slide Show with all ten songs in it. For each song, make a note of the slide number for each ‘title’ slide. Eg – God’s Word is the Bible, 1; So this is how, 12; and so on.
“Play” the slideshow – when you want to choose a song, type it’s title slide number using the computer keyboard and hit ‘enter’, the show will move to that slide, ready for you to hit space when you want the song to start!
Hint: have a “Welcome to our holiday club” kind-of slide for slide number 1 of the show, then in between songs you can just hit “1 – Enter” and you’ll go back to that each time.