How to Make a Baby's First Year Slideshow Presentation in PowerPoint

If you want to make a slideshow that you can send to family or friends, you can use Microsoft PowerPoint. The nice thing about PowerPoint is that you can add music and make the pictures appear and disappear in different ways with screen animation. Modify these steps to make a slideshow for any other occasion as well.

Load your photos onto the computer. You can use as many photos as you want. Start with a picture of mom and dad's wedding, followed by a slide or two of mom being pregnant. Add a few slides of the baby shower and then pictures from the day of the baby's birth. The best song to use for this first set of slides to birth is "Having My Baby." However, you can use any music you choose. Next add some pictures of all of the grandparents and cousins. All other pictures will be of the baby growing up. The final slides should be of the baby's first birthday. After you have all of the pictures loaded, you are ready to start creating the presentation.

Open your Microsoft PowerPoint software. You are given a blank slide. This first slide can be the landing page. Type the baby's name and birth date with the weight and length. Add some color to this and all other slide pages. Click on Format, then click Slide Design. Here you can choose a color template for every slide.

Click on the Insert tab and add a slide. Then click on the Format tab and select Slide Layout. This opens an array of formats you can use as the basis for the page you are working on. You can have a title and one, two, three or four pictures on each slide. You can get this layout by clicking on the layout that has a heading and one picture, two pictures and so on. The picture box will open up and click on the icon to insert a picture.

Add music to the slideshow to start on the first slide where you have written the baby's name. Click on the Slide Show tab and then click Slide Transition. This opens a box where you can control the music. In the middle of the side box, you will see "Speed" and "Sound." Click on "Sound" and browse to select a song from your computer. The song has to be in WAV file format, not MP3.

You will also select the speed of the slideshow. Medium works very well. The transition is on top and you choose how each slide appears or disappears. For this slideshow, choose "Dissolve." Click on "Automatically After" and not "On Click Mouse" for the advancement of the slides. Change the seconds to how long you want each slide to be viewed. Usually three seconds is effective.

Save your slideshow and then click the "Slide Show" button at the bottom of the Slide Transition page to see your presentation.

Add more music by finding the last slide where the first song ends and clicking "Sound," then "Other Sound." and adding another song from your computer. This song will start on this slide after the first sound has ended on the previous slide. For instance, "Having Your Baby" lasts for about twenty slides and then on the twenty-first slide, you add another song.