First Steps with Animation: PowerPoint’s Most Important Tool

Animations can be altered to be dramatically different using altered timing and delays. You can stagger animations to happen in a rapid sequence, cause a short delay before an animation occurs to time better with other elements in the presentation, or combine these into dramatic effects that don’t look anything like standard PowerPoint.

Timing

Each animation lasts for a certain period of time. In the Animation Pane, you can see the animation duration represented by a bar (usually coloured to match the type of animation e.g. green = entrance animation). The width of the bar gives a visual representation of how long the animation will last. The position of the timing bar also shows you when one animation will happen relative to the others that happen in the same click number (for each new click, the animation bars are reset to zero start time, as they will start as you click. You can alter this timing on the Animations tab in the Duration box. Or right click on an individual animation and choose Timing to bring up the animation timing box, where you can choose from five pre-sets, or just enter your own number in the box. Or you can use the timing bar in the animation pane, by clicking on the edge of the bar and resizing it to get the time that you want.

Delay

As well as using the with or after previous timing options, you can manually set when animations happen, relative to everything else, by using the delay function. You can alter this timing on the Animation tab in the Delay box. Or right click on an individual animation and choose Timing to bring up the animation timing box, where you can enter the delay (in seconds) that you want in the box. Or you can use the timing bar in the animation pane, by clicking on the bar and moving it to get the delay that you want.

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