Animation!!!
Animation effects quickly and effectively jazz up any presentation style. Animations can be used to illustrate ideas, build concepts, or simply make your presentation more attractive. The most important thing to remember is to not overuse the animations. Too many animated figures can detract from a presentation.
You can animate almost any component of your presentation (i.e. text, pictures, charts, and graphs).
When you are ready to animate an object, single click on the object and then from the VIEW menu, scroll down and select TOOLBARS, and from the sub-menu select ANIMATION EFFECTS.
The ANIMATION EFFECTS toolbar appears with buttons to create quick animation effects.
To find out what a button will do, with your cursor point but do not click on a button, and a small yellow box pops up and defines the buttons function.
Once an object in your presentation has been selected, click on the desired button to create the animation. For example, if you want to animate your title, click on your title, then click on the ANIMATE TITLE button. Next, click on a type of animation such as FLY IN. The same works for animating any other component of your slide, except you would click on the ANIMATE SLIDE TEXT button first instead of the ANIMATE TITLE BUTTON.
If you want a greater variety in your choice of animation effects, click on the CUSTOM ANIMATION button.
The CUSTOM ANIMATION window includes multiple features. Besides choosing from a variety of animation effects, you can determine the order of your animation effects and add accompanying sound effects.
Initially, you have to choose what part of your slide, i.e. title or slide text, to animate by choosing from the SELECT TO ANIMATE box in the upper left corner of the CUSTOM ANIMATION window. Next, single-click the ADD EFFECT button to open a menu offering all possible animation effects for the selected object.
Once you've added several effects, you can edit the order in which they occur via the arrows to the left of the ANIMATION ORDER window. A number of basic properties, like speed, are changed with the menus below that window.
The EFFECT OPTIONS button offers options like sounds, hiding, dimming, timing, and others. The final effect is summarized by the preview in the bottom-left of the window, and a verbal description is found at the bottom-right. Single-click OK to finish.
In addition to being able to animate figures within a slide, you can also add transitions between slides. Fom the SLIDE SHOW menu select SLIDE TRANSITION... . The SLIDE TRANSITION window offers timing and a variety of animation features. You can specify what action triggers the animation by making a choice at the bottom of the window; you can choose to make your animation automatic, i.e. it will start the action after a certain number of seconds have passed; or you can choose to trigger it by a mouse-click.
Alternately, if you just want a simple transition effect without all the options, use the CHANGE SLIDES heading, SLIDE TRANSITIONS tab of the Formatting Palette.
Animation offers a wonderful opportunity to really spice up your presentations. Next, see how to add movies and sound to really catch your audience's attention:
Onward to Liven it up with Movies and Sounds!!
Written by Francesca Cedor '01; Revised and updated for PowerPoint 2004 by Jordan McDonnell '08