Understanding Animation

PowerPoint includes a multitude of animation options. You can use animation (p. 323-327) to transition from one slide to another in your presentation or to introduce objects and text on a slide. You can also customize these basic animations in a variety of ways. Additional animation options include the capability to have action buttons or other objects perform a specific action in your presentation, such as opening a Web page on the Internet.

In this chapter you learn how to:

• Set transitions Automating transitions from one slide to another in your PowerPoint presentation is easy when you use one of many available slide transition techniques.

• Use preset animation Introduce new objects and text onto a slide by using preset animation. This feature enables you to have objects appear using techniques such as wiping, dissolving, flying, or flashing.

• Create custom animations For more complex animations, you can use the Custom Animation dialog box. This dialog box also includes options for animating media clips and embedded objects.

• Use action settings and buttons If you want to jump to another slide or to an external application while presenting, you can easily do so using action settings. You can apply action settings to objects you create or to predesigned action buttons.

• Use the Animation Effects toolbar If you want to animate text, this toolbar provides a handy way to access all the features you need in one place.

  Like most of PowerPoint's capabilities, animation can be either very simple or detailed and complex. It all depends on how creative and sophisticated you want to make your presen-tation.

→ To learn more about animation and visual design, see "The Media—Designing Visual Support."

PowerPoint includes a variety of animation options, which can be overwhelming if you're not sure about what each one does. Depending on what you want to animate (slide, text, drawing object, chart, media clip, and so forth) and what type of animation you want to use (a direction or an action), you have several ways to create the desired animation effect in PowerPoint. Your basic choices include

• Slide transitions Enables you to determine how to transition from one slide to the next in your presentation.

• Preset animation Enables you to animate PowerPoint objects such as text or drawing objects using directional effects similar to slide transitions. For example, you can use preset animation to dissolve or wipe title text into your presentation.

• Custom animation Enables you to set more sophisticated animation options such as the order and timing of multiple animation objects in one slide. You can also use custom animation to animate charts and media clips such as sound and movie files.

• Action settings Enables you to attach a mouse action to a PowerPoint object. For example, you can open a Web page, go to another slide, or start an external program by clicking the mouse or even just passing the mouse pointer over the selected object. An action setting differs from the previous types of animation in that it performs an action rather than defines how to directionally introduce an object or slide.

• Action buttons Enables you to attach an action to a specific button. An action button is a predefined object that includes an action setting. You can attach an action setting to an object you create or you can use one of the pre-existing action buttons instead.