Have you ever created a Word document and included a link to a YouTube video? Today I’ll show you how to put that video right into the document!

Most people don’t even know this is possible so it’s a great trick to show your friends.

First, you need to determine what video you want to use for this. Let’s say we’re writing an article about the TV show The Office. I’ve been a big fan of that show for a long time and highly recommend it. Anyway, there’s a YouTube video that has a few minutes of bloopers from the Office, so that’s the video we want to use.

When you see that video on YouTube, up at the top in the address bar you’ll see the website address for that video:

Highlight that website address, and Copy it (right click, Copy).

Now, go to your Word document and put your cursor at the spot where you want to insert that video.

Then, click on “Insert”, and in the Insert section, click on “Online video”:

Now you’ll see a new window open, and it will ask you for the URL (the website address) for the video. So, in the field provided, do a right-click and choose Paste. That puts the address in that field, and you can click Insert.

Now, the video will show inside the document like this:

As you can see, there are control points all around the video image, so you can drag and make it as small or as large as you like. You can even rotate it using the rotate arrow at the top. You can also format it the same way you would format a regular picture – so the text in the document can flow around it, or beside it, or right over the top of it if you want.

So, what happens when you click to play that video? Well, a small window opens right in front of the Word document, and there’s a Play button which you can click to watch the video.

And it plays, right there in the document. If you click anywhere outside the video window, that window disappears and you’re back to the regular document. It’s pretty smooth.

You might be thinking, “Why would I do this?”  Well, if you want reference a video in your article, you could just include the website address for that video. The reader could then click  the link, and open a separate window such as Chrome, where they could also watch that video. By including the video inside the Word document, it makes it more convenient for the reader because they don’t have to open a separate program in order to go to the YouTube website and view the video. They can do everything from right within your document.

Bonus: people will probably ask, “How did you do that?!”