Animating+Your+Powerpoint

Animation in a powerpoint could be the thing that really draws people's attention to your slideshow, but be careful it can also be just the opposite. When animating your slideshow it is very important that you remember to animate it in a way that will catch people attention and not simply annoy people when they see it.

Animation is generally best to be saved for last when creating your powerpoint so that you can animate everything you wish to all at once. In order to begin animating your powerpoint you must first click on the "Animation" tab located on the ribbon. Once this tab is selected from the ribbon you will see a plethora of options, but for now we will stick with the basics. Click on the icon which says "custom animation" to bring up a small interface on the right side of your screen. You can move this interface to different parts of the screen if you dislike it being on the right side of your screen. Now in order to begin animating your powerpoint you must click on the object you wish to be animated. Once clicked, you will notice that the "Add Effect" tab has now become available. Click this tab and you will be given a choice of many different kinds of animation.

The first you will see is "Entrance". These kinds of animations are used if you would like your animation to appear on the screen in a fancy or exciting way. For example, you can have an object fly onto the screen or you can have is magically appear onto the slide. When you highlight the "Entrance" command a list of 6 basic animations will appear; now you can choose from these 6 animations if you'd like or you can click the "More Effects" command for a large list of many different forms of entrances. The next type of animation listed under add effects is "Emphasis". As you can tell from the name of this kind of animation, these animations are used to emphasise a specific object on a slide. Once the object has entered the slide you can then use one of the emphasis animations provided in the same way that you used the entrance animations. The third type of animation provided is "Exit" animations. "Exit" animations are selected in the same way as enterance and emphasis animations, but rather than have your object enter the slide they will have this object depart from the slide. Lastly, the final type of animation you can add to your slide is motion paths. Motions paths are used to fully customize the way the objects and information on your slides are animated. The way you apply motion paths to an object on your slide is the same as all three of the afor mentioned types of animation, but this kind of animation is much more advanced as you can decide exactly where on the slide you want an object to move to and from.

You can decide the order in which your animations will take place by clicking and dragging the animation in the interface and moving it into the order you desire (your animations will go in order from top to bottom). If you would like to have specific animations happen simultaneously you can hold down the shift key and click on each object on the slide that you would like to animate. Each object that you have clicked on will now all be selected together, and when animated each object will receive the same form of animation.

Once again, animation is the part of the powerpoint where you can really try to draw attention to your slideshow, but be careful not to use too much animation in your slideshow as that may either slow down your presenation, draw away from the information you are trying to display with the presentation, or possibly even confuse the viewers of your powerpoint with everything flying around all at once.

Making a powerpoint animation is quick and easy an described above but heres a quick video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFF0afHbza8