How To Add a Live Clock to PowerPoint Slides

Add a Live Clock to PowerPoint Slides Using Macros

The best way that we’ve found to add a live clock into a PowerPoint slide is to use a Macros enabled PowerPoint file, with a small VB script. Read on to see how to set this up.

Create a Macros Enabled PowerPoint File and Add the VBA Macro

The first step in creating your live clock in PowerPoint is to create a Macros Enabled PowerPoint file. To this open PowerPoint and select File > Save As > PowerPoint Macro Enabled Presentation (*.pptm). We’ve created a .pptm named “Example” below.

The next step is to enable the Developer tab in PowerPoint. To do this, navigate to File > Options > Customize Ribbon, and under Customize the Ribbon: Main Tabs, check the Developer Box.

Enable the Developer Tab in PowerPoint

With the Developer Tab enabled, navigate to it and select “Macros.” In the dialog box that opens, give the new Macro a descriptive name such as “Clock.” Select “Create.” In the window that is opened (Visual Basic Editor), insert the entire text content below.

Add the Clock and Apply the Macro

Now that we have the Macro in place it’s time to add the live clock. From the Insert Tab, insert a Text Box object. Type “clock” into the text box. Highlight the entire text box and under the Insert menu, select “Action.” In the action dialog box, select Run Macros on Mouse Click and select the Clock macro we created.

Select the “Clock” macro under the Action Settings

Launch the Power Point presentation and click the Text Box to start the clock. You should see the clock start running and displaying system time.

The live clock will start running once the macros is launched

Now you can style the slide as need. We suggest using a static image set as the background.

Style the live clock as you would any Text Box

Note: We suggest building the live clock first and then adding content after, as certain object types seem to affect the functionality.

Note #2: Edit the macro and remove seconds to display minutes only (having the seconds on is nice for testing). You can also do other styling and formats (such as am-pm, 24 hour time, etc.) following the VB syntax.

Shout out to Reddit for providing the macro syntax.