Best Practices for PowerPoint: Animations
Custom Animations:
Power Point offers a Custom Animation feature that will allow a user to select slide objects and add attributes such as entrance, exit, and emphasis actions. These actions can be set to execute automatically, after a timed interval, or with a mouse action. Custom animations are used for emphasis, presentation timing, or aesthetics.
The Accessibility Wizard does not currently support custom animation in the rendering process. Text that is animated in a presentation will be rendered as static text without the animation. For Best Practices it is important to understand how to use the correct features to create them. Below are some simple steps for locating the Custom Animation feature and how to attribute a feature to a text object.
Why Use Animations?
Animations to the objects on a slide or slide transitions enable a presentation to use a visual stimulus to support an idea. Some animations are used for emphasis while others are there as decoration. Be aware of your audience and whether or not using animations because "that's cool" is a good technique.
Animating Text:
Opening the Custom Animation Sidebar
The Custom Animation sidebar can be opened by selecting SLIDE SHOW and then CUSTOM ANIMATIONS from the main menu at the top of the page. (If you do not see the CUSTOM ANIMATIONS choice, the menu may be compressed. Place your cursor on the arrows located at the bottom of the menu. This will cause the menu to expand and show all choices available.) This will open the sidebar in your program.
A second way to open the Custom Animation sidebar is to select the object you are going to animate, right click, then select Custom Animations from the menu that comes up.
Animating individual pieces of text
It is important that your text is placed in text boxes. To insure this, the Best Practice step is to always use the Slide Layout feature when developing your presentation. You can view the Slide Layout section for more information on using the Slide Layout feature and determining if your presentation is using text boxes.
Highlight the section of text that you are going to animate.
If you have not opened the Custom Animation sidebar, right click, then select Custom Animations from the menu that comes up.
Click on the ADD EFFECT button to bring up the Custom Animation submenu which includes options for animating on entrance, emphasis, exit, or defining a motion path.
Although there are several options to choose from to animate your slide objects, the method is the same for animating on entrance, emphasis, exit, or defining a motion path.
Select ENTRANCE to bring up the different options for this animation. The submenu lists just a few of the choices. To view all the selections, click on MORE EFFECTS.
Select the effect that you would like to use. When you select the effect, you will see your highlighted text react in the selected animation. A number is placed next to the animation to indicate the order of animation for the slide. The animation shows up in the Custom Animation window identified by the same text that was highlighted. The animation can be modified for start method, direction, and speed. Additional options can be changed by selecting the arrow next to the listing to bring up a dropdown menu.
Animating multiple lines of text
You can animate several lines of text, complete text boxes, or multiple text
boxes on a slide. The method to add animation and adjust animation options
is the same as above. To animate several lines of text within a text box,
highlight the multiple lines. To animate a text box, click within the text
box to bring up the text box border (a thick dotted line surrounding the group
of text), but do not highlight any items within the text box. To animate multiple
text boxes, click inside the first text box to bring up the text box border,
hold down the SHIFT key, then select the next object. For more than two object,
continue to hold down the SHIFT key while selecting the objects. Complete
the animation as above.