If you really want to add some excitement to your
presentation, try adding some animations.
PowerPoint has a wide variety of animation effects
that you can apply to text and objects.
I'm creating a trivia night slide show,
and each trivia question will have the answer on the following slide.
And I want to add animations to this picture and
to the answer itself.
Start by clicking on an object, and then go to the
Animations tab.
And in the Animation group, you can view the different types of effects that are available.
There are four different categories:
Entrance, which will happen when the object first appears on the slide,
Emphasis, which happens while the object is on the slide,
Exit, which causes the object to disappear,
and Motion Paths, which move the object along a path.
I'm going to choose Float In, which is an Entrance
effect.
For some effects, you will have Effect Options.
For example, this one lets you choose a direction.
Now let's say I want to add second effect to this
picture.
If I go back to this menu and select one, it's
going to replace the Entrance effect.
Instead, I'll need to go to Add Animation to add
more than one.
It's easy to keep track of which objects have animations,
because they will have numbers next to them - one for each effect.
And the slide will also have this little star picture.
If you want to preview the effects, you can just
click the Preview command.
And I like these effects, so I want to apply the
same ones to this text.
Instead of adding them one-by-one, I can just use
the Animation Painter to copy them.
Click on the object that has the effects.
Then click Animation Painter, and the cursor will
have a little paintbrush on it.
And when you click on the other object, it will
now have the same effects.
We have four effects on this slide,
so now would be a good time to open up the Animation Pane to help us manage them.
It will appear on the right side of the screen, and it lets you do a couple of things:
You can click and drag the effects if you want to
reorder them,
and you can also click the drop-down arrow to see more options for each effect.
By default, each effect starts when you click the mouse,
but I don't want to have to click for every single one.
Instead, we can have the effect start automatically
at the same time as the previous effect,
or after the previous effect ends.
And that's what I want.
And I'm going to do the same thing for the Text
Box Entrance effect.
This just makes the animations flow more smoothly, since they're being triggered automatically.
If you click the drop-down arrow again and go to
Effect Options,
you'll have a dialog box where you can fine-tune the animation.
And these options will vary depending on which effect it is.
And you can also adjust the timing.
I'm going to add a few seconds of delay to give
people a little more time
to think of the answer before it appears.
Now, I will to play the slide show so I can view
the finished product.
I'll click the mouse to trigger the first effect.
And then after three seconds it will trigger the
next effect, and then the next one.
And the answer will stay on the screen until I
click the mouse again.
Perfect!
So adding a few animations can turn a simple slide
show into a
presentation that's engaging and fun for your audience to watch.