How to #1: Build your slides with animation
16 May 2009
Our experts here at Article 10 Presentations have got our heads together to give you some free PowerPoint training – aren’t we nice!
Today we thought we’d give you a ‘how-to’ on building your slides with animation. Lots of our clients ask us to build this into their presentations – it’s incredibly helpful when presenting as it allows the speaker to control what is on screen whilst they are speaking. You can bring your bullet points in click by click to stop your audience reading ahead and ensure they are concentrating on the current message.
So here’s how (for PowerPoint 2003):
- Choose the slide you want to animate, right click the text box you want to build and choose Custom Animation.
- On the right of the screen you will see the animation panel. At the top of this panel choose add effect > entrance > fade.
- The default option is for each bullet to appear on click, which is the most useful option if you are presenting and want to manually control the bullet points.
- If required, this option can be changed to ‘with previous’ (all bullets come in together) or ‘after previous’ (bullets come in after each other automatically), which is suitable if you want all the animations to happen without any speaker input.
- The speed can also be changed in the animation pane.
- Animation can also be added to objects in the same way, for example if you have a picture you want to appear on a click action.
For PowerPoint 2007, you have to select the text box you want to animate and choose the Animation tab on the ribbon, then Custom Animation to get to the animation panel.
And a bit of extra advice - use your animations wisely! Our text animation of choice is Fade as it is subtle and professional. If in doubt, remember the mantra, less is more!
