Text animation

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Text animation

Now that you know how to introduce slides with various transition effects, it is time that you learn how to introduce different lines of text on a slide using various text animation effects. For your assignment, you are asked to use a number of different text animations in your presentation.

Setting a Text Animation

To apply an animation, go to the "Slide" view (select "Slide" under the "View" menu). Next, click on "Custom Animation" under the "Slide Show" menu as shown below:

You will then be able to view the following window:

As you can see, the slide from a presentation appears in the top right portion of this "Custom Animation" window. The layout of this slide has three textboxes: Title 1, Text 2, and Text 3. These three objects are listed under the "Timing" tab shown in the lower half of the window, because they are not currently set with any animation effects. To apply an animation to the "Title 1" text box (referred to here as an object), select it by clicking on it, then click the radio button for "Animate" in the right part of the screen. You will see "Title 1" move to the list at the top of the window under "Animation Order." When more than one object has an animation, the up and down arrows can be used to change the order of the appearance of the animation.

With "Title 1" selected, choose whether you want the animation to start by clicking the text or object, in which case you would choose "On mouse click," or if you would like the animation to start automatically after a given number of seconds following the previous animation event, in which case you would chose "Automatically" and enter a number of seconds.

To select your animation effect, click the "Effects" tab to see the following:

Select an animation from the first drop-down menu. In the above image, the "Fly From Left" animation is chosen. You may choose the option for sound you prefer in the second drop-down menu. The third drop-down menu for "After animation" allows you to dim text (by changing its colour) when a new line of text is introduced. It also allows you to hide text after an animation or mouse click. The right half of the Effects screen lets you choose settings for introducing test - either all at once, by word, or by letter. You may also group text by level paragraphs. You would have to repeat the above steps for every object you want to animate on a given slide. Play around with a few of these options. The tabs for Chart Effects and Play Settings will not be covered at this time.

Preview Animation

Click the "Preview" button in the "Custom Animation" window to see how your animations work. There are other ways to preview your animations as well. To preview animations when in "Slide" view, click "Animation Preview" on the "Slide Show" menu. The animation plays in the slide miniature that appears. To replay the animation, click the slide miniature.You may also check out your animations by viewing your slide show. To do this, select "Slide Show" under the "View" menu (or click the slide show shortcut in the lower left corner of your PowerPoint window). If you ever want to end a slide show before it is finished, move your cursor to the lower left corner of the screen, where the following transparent image will appear (this one shows up grey because the background of the slide behind it was grey):

Click on this image to get the following menu, from which you can select "End Show."

A shortcut to end a slide show is to press the "Esc" key on your keyboard. To advance to the next slide in a Slide Show, click your mouse or press the space bar on your keyboard. To move forward and backward between slides in a slide show, you may use the arrow keys on your keyboard or select "Next," "Previous," or "Go" from the above menu. You will notice that there is a "Pen" option on this menu. When selected, the Pen allows you to draw on the slide during presentation.

To create a quick and basic animation and bypass the above "Custom Animation" window, select the object (i.e., text box) you want to animate (be sure you are in "Slide" view). Next, go to the "Slide Show" menu and select one of the animation options under "Preset Animation."

Please move onto the next section on Colour Scheme.