Tuesday, July 30th, 2013

Create a one click animation in PowerPoint 2013

Learn how to create a simple animation in PowerPoint. You will add a shape which, when clicked will trigger an image to be displayed. It is a smart animation with lots of potential uses which, once you see how it is done, will be simple to adapt to your own needs.

Transcript:

Hello, I’m Helen Bradley.

Welcome to this video tutorial. In this tutorial I’m going to show you how you can create an animation where you click a button to show an image. Before we get started with this tutorial let’s have a look and see what it is that we’re going to achieve.

I have an image here and a shape and when we play the presentation this is what we’re going to see. We’re going to see a slide without the picture and when I click on this shape I’ll see the image displayed. And we’re going to create this animation where we click on a shape and an image appears.

So back in PowerPoint let’s go to a new slide and I’ve already inserted my image. I just chose Insert and then Online Pictures. I searched for an elephant and I’ve just inserted it on the slide. So there’s nothing special about what I’ve done to date. Now I’m going to choose Insert and then Shapes and I’m going to choose my rounded rectangle shape.

And I’m going to add it to my slide and I’m going to add some text to it. And I’m just going to click away from the shape. Now that we have our shape and our image we’re ready to create the animation. To do this I’m going to click the Animations tab on the Ribbon. And I want to animate the elephant so I’m going to click on the elephant image and I’m going to choose an animation for it.

So I could choose an animation such as fade so it will fade in. And then I’m going to open the Animation task pane over here by clicking on Animation Pane because I want the elephant to be animated but I don’t want him to appear on a click and I don’t want him to appear after the slide is opened. I want him to appear when you click this particular shape.

And that’s a different animation. This is the elephant animation so I’m going to right click it and choose Effect Options because that allows me to control how this effect is going to play. And I’m going to click the Timing tab.

And I want this to be triggered by the clicking of this shape so I’m selecting to Start Effect on Click of and I’m going to select Rounded Rectangle and just click Ok. And now this image is going to animate when we click this shape. Let’s close down the task pane and let’s go and test it.

I’ll click the Slide Show. You have to do that because you have to test this slide as it would appear inside a working slide show. And you can see here we have our slide on the screen and just our filled rectangle. I’m gray. I have a trunk. Click to see what I am. The elephant image is not visible yet. However when I click the shape the elephant appears and we would then progress through the slide show.

So this is a simple animation effect that you can create so that you can click a shape and something happens. The animation is all added. All the effects are added to the image itself. You’re going to animate it with some sort of an entrance effect and then adjust its timing so that it is triggered by a click on this shape here.

I’m Helen Bradley.

Thank you for joining me for this video tutorial. Look out for more PowerPoint tutorials on this YouTube channel as well as additional tutorials on other Office applications and Photoshop, Lightroom and Illustrator.

Visit my website at helenbradley.com for tips, tricks and tutorials on all these applications.

Helen Bradley

Wednesday, July 25th, 2012

Configure PowerPoint 2010 Animations

In earlier versions of PowerPoint you could select the size for a Grow/Shrink animation. In PowerPoint 2010 it seems these features are more limited – that’s not the case but to make them more useful you need to know how the animations can be configured.

On a slide with a full size image on it, click the Animations tab and select the Grow/Shrink animation – it is an Emphasis effect.

If you select Effect Options you will see that you can select Both so the animation grows in both directions. Now select Larger or Huge. In most cases, Larger will be sufficient but notice that it appears as if you can only choose Larger or Huge as bigger sizes and that there is nothing in between these two settings. This is where you can get misled.

Click the Animation Pane icon to display the Animation pane. Right click the entry for your image in the Animation Pane and choose Effect options. See that the Size is set to 150 % but you can set it to any value of your choice using the Custom option.

For example, set it to 75%. Here too you can add Smooth Start and Smooth End to the effect and a Bounce to the end of it.

In most cases, you’ll want your animation to start immediately the slide appears so click the Timing tab, set the Start option to After Previous. Set the Duration value to your choice of speed and click Ok.

It’s best to test your animations using the slideshow preview rather than the animation pane.

Helen Bradley

Wednesday, April 18th, 2012

Unhide Hidden PowerPoint 2010 animations

Sometimes when you’re working in PowerPoint you’ll notice that an animation is not available and it is greyed out.

For example add an image to a slide and then try to select the drop animation from the Entrance Effects. It’s not available because what you’re trying to select is a tool that is used to animate text and  you are using an image.

However you can use this animation on an image, you just need to know how to do so. To do this, place the image inside a shape. So, add a shape to the slide – a plain rectangle will do, and as the shape background add the picture by right-clicking the shape, choose Format Shape and then from the shape Fill options select Picture and fill it with a picture.

Right click the shape and choose Edit Text and press the spacebar a couple of times so that you add some text to the shape – spaces won’t show but they are text. It’s critical that you do this because without the text the shape will not be able to be animated using text animation tools.

Now when you select the Animate options and the Entrance Effects you’ll find that the effects that you couldn’t use before like Drop, Flip and Whip are now available because you’re working with PowerPoint deems to be a text object.

 

 

Helen Bradley

Thursday, May 3rd, 2007

Gilding the Lily – Animating SmartArt

I love the new SmartArt feature in Office 2007 and I’d buy Office just to get hold of it. The images are drop dead gorgeous and they’re so easy to make and to color.

So, what’s better than great looking SmartArt? Animated SmartArt, that is. Launch PowerPoint 2007 and create a SmartArt object. Select it and then click the Animations tab. From the Animate dropdown list choose One by One and Preview the result – deliciously animated SmartArt. Of course, you can do all sorts of Animations – this is just to whet your appetite.

Fun huh?

Helen Bradley