By means of PowerPoint animation effects, you can add smooth transitions between different states of your presentations by moving objects in place or around the slide canvas. Animations can add a unique touch to both business PowerPoint presentations and creative slideshows.
Custom animations used in your PowerPoint projects evoke the natural human instincts and attract the human eye to the moving objects. If you want to add a more engaging and interactive viewing experience to your slides, then custom animation PowerPoint effects can help you attain the desired results.
In fact, PowerPoint animations can help you achieve more than just adding a more dynamic look to your slides. When used wisely, PowerPoint animations ket you make your content more attractive and engaging. Custom animations let you bring the focus of your audience’s attention to the focal ideas presented on your slides. Moreover, custom animations let you leave a more memorable impression on your public.
Microsoft PowerPoint offers you plenty of opportunities to add custom animations. You can apply animation effects to texts, shapes, and pictures featured on your slides. Some of the most popular PowerPoint animation effects are Appear, Fade in, Fly in, etc. However, when our imagination needs more than standard PowerPoint animations, you can create complex, unique animations that no other PowerPoint presentation contains.
How to Make Animation in PowerPoint
You can animate both texts and objects of your PowerPoint presentations. In order to animate an object, first select an item that you’d like to animate, and pick an animation from the Animations tab. You can also modify the animation settings according to your preferences.
You can also add animation effects to different slides of your presentation. The effects are applied similarly to object animation. Slide animations are applied in the Transitions tab of the settings panel.
Microsoft PowerPoint also lets you add animated images and videos to slides using the Insert tab. You can add custom animations to both free and premium templates for PowerPoint.
How to Animate Objects in PowerPoint
To get started, open PowerPoint and the file that you’d like to edit. You can animate objects in both ready-made templates and the files that you are currently working on.
To add animation effects to objects, click on the items that you would like to animate.
If you want to animate texts, click on the whole text box or the border of the text box. PowerPoint automatically distinguishes different pieces of text separated by paragraphs.
Next, navigate to the “Animations” tab. You can find it int he top menu bar. Click on it and you will see a number of animation options and controls.
Choose the animation effect that you’d like to add to your object or text. You will find all the animation effects split into 4 categories - paths, emphasis, exits, and entrances.
Entrance animations change the way an object enters the page.
Exit animations change how the object or text leaves the page.
Emphasis animations bring more emphasis to an object or text while adding movement or highlights to it.
Paths set a course of movements for the chosen object or text on the PowerPoint presentation slide.
To add extra animations to an object, click “Add Animation” and choose the preferred animation effect from the dropdown. At this stage, you should mind that attempting to add animation without clicking Add Animation will replace the existing animation effect instead of adding more effects to it.
Next, you need to select an activation option for the animation. To do this, navigate to the Start dropdown, find the Timing section on the right of the Animations toolbar. Here you can find such options as:
On mouse click - the animation effect activates as you click on the mouse;
After previous - the effect starts playing right after the earlier animation effect stops acting;
With previous - the effect plays at the same time with the previous animation effect on the slide.
Set the timing. You can adjust the animation-delay with a click on the Delay option in the Timing section. This will set the amount of time delay that takes place before and after the animation takes place.
Set the animation duration. To change the speed of the animation, click the up or down arrows next to the Duration section. This will set the animation effect to be revealed at higher or slower speeds.
Add sound effects. To attract more attention of your audience to the information presented on your slides, you can add a sound effect to the animation. To do this, navigate to the Animation Pane, click the down arrow next to animation and choose Effect Options. In the Effect tab, click Enhancements to select a sound from the list or add one on your own.
How to Animate Page Transitions
In addition to adding animation effects to texts and objects in your PowerPoint presentations, you can animate transitions between different slides of your PowerPoint presentation. Here’s a quick guide to animate page transitions.
In the top menu bar of the settings panel, find the Transitions tab. You will find a set of animated transitions and controls displayed there.
Choose the slide to which you’d like to add the transition effect.
Select a transition effect. Before applying a transition effect to a slide, you can preview it. If you want to remove a transition effect from a slide, select “None” on the left. Mind that you cannot add more than one animation effect to one slide.
Specify how the transition occurs. Click the effects options buttons placed to the right of the transition. Here you will see a list of all changes you can apply to the transition.
Similar to working with object transitions, you can adjust the transition duration for page animations. Higher duration means a slower transition between slides.
Add the sound effect to page transitions if needed. To do this, click the Sound dropdown menu to the right of Effect Options to add during the transition effect.
How to Add Animated Videos to a PowerPoint Presentation
Similar to animating objects and pages in your PowerPoint presentation, the software lets you enhance your slides with animated video content.
To get started, click the Insert tab in the top menu bar.
In the “Media” section, find the “Video” tab. Click on it. This will open a menu with options to search for videos on your computer or the Internet.
Clicking on the “Video on my computer” button, you will see a window asking you to browse your computer for video files. Select the needed file, click and drop to move it around the slide.
Most Common PowerPoint Presentation Mistakes Explained
The biggest mistake that users make is not applying animation effects to PowerPoint presentations at all. You do not need to create crazy wild animations styles. Add a couple of transitions between your slides and animate a few objects on your slides.
Not stacking up PowerPoint animations. One more mistake made by users is adding a slide entrance animation and simply stopping there.
Not having a proper PowerPoint ‘spice rack’. The key point of creating cool PowerPoint sequences is knowing all the tools available in the presentations software and knowing how to work with them. This includes the understanding of the 4 major types of animations, the animation pane, the selection pane, the clear understanding of sequencing, etc.
Limiting all animation effects to a single slide. It’s better to break sequences apart on more than one slide of your PowerPoint presentation.
Final Words
Dull and boring presentations can hardly impress your audience and leave a long-lasting impression on your viewers. It’s time to look for ways to add an engaging and more interactive style to your slides. This can be achieved by means of animation effects. Transition effects provide for engaging and interactive storytelling. These can complement the information. The animation effects increase the wow-effect on the audience and make it more appealing and memorable. Apply the aforementioned PowerPoint animation effects in practice. See how much more engaging your slides will become with their help!