Animating Text
Author: Geetesh Bajaj
Product/Version: PowerPoint 2002, 2003, and 2007
Date Created: May 19th 2009
Last Updated: May 19th 2009
Excerpt/Capsule: Learn how to animate text in PowerPoint.
As part of the animation tutorials series, I have showed you how you can add an animation to any slide object in PowerPoint. However, there's more to animating text than just adding an animation since PowerPoint provides specialized options for animating paragraphs and bulleted text. In this tutorial we will learn how you can use these special options to animate text sequentially by words, by letters, and by paragraph levels.
Follow these steps to apply animation to text:
- Select part of the text, or the entire text box / placeholder with bulleted (or paragraphed) text, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Select text
- Next, make sure that the Custom Animation task pane is visible, as shown in Figure 2. If this task pane is not visible, you won't be able to add or edit any animations.
For PowerPoint 2007 users, click the Animation tab on the Ribbon and then choose the Custom Animation button to bring up a task pane of the same name that you can see in Figure 2. Remember, this is a toggle option: click once to show the Custom Animation task pane, and click again to hide it!
Users of earlier PowerPoint versions (PowerPoint 2002 and 2003) can again make sure that the text is selected. Then they should choose Slide Show | Custom Animation to access a similar task pane (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: Custom Animation
- In the Custom Animation task pane click the Add Effect button, as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Add Effect
- This opens a fly-out menu that lets you select any of the four animation types that PowerPoint provides. For this tutorial, I chose the Entrance option, which opens another fly-out menu that you can see in Figure 3 above.
- Choose any of the animation styles in this fly-out menu, or choose More Effects to see more animation options. We won't go into detail about adding an animation here since we have already covered that part in a previous tutorial. We chose the Wipe animation and selected the From Left direction (look ahead at Figure 4).
- Now right-click the animation item in the Custom Animation task pane and choose Effect Options from the resultant context menu, as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Effect Options
- This summons a multi-tabbed dialog box as shown in Figure 5. Click the Text Animation tab, and from the Group Text drop-down list, choose any of the options:
- As One Object: Animates the entire text box at one go.
- All Paragraphs At Once: Animates all paragraphs or bullet levels at one go.
- By 1st Level Paragraphs: Animates by 1st level paragraphs or bullet levels. This is the default option that PowerPoint uses.
- By 2nd Level Paragraphs: Animates by both 1st and 2nd level paragraphs or bullet levels. Of course, this works only if you have 2nd level paragraphs or bullet levels in your selected text.
- By 3rd Level Paragraphs: Works the same way, animating all levels from 1st to 3rd level paragraphs or bullet levels
- By 4th Level Paragraphs: Works the same way, animating all levels from 1st to 4th level paragraphs or bullet levels
- By 5th Level Paragraphs: Works the same way, animating all levels from 1st to 5th level paragraphs or bullet levels
Figure 5: Text Animation
- You can set the playing time of the text by choosing Automatically After check box (see Figure 6). And In reverse order option will play the text animation reversed.
Figure 6: Text Animation
- Click the Effect tab as shown in Figure 7, and from the Animate Text drop-down list, choose any of the options:
- All at once
- By word
- By letters
Figure 7: Effects
- Click OK to apply and save your presentation.
Related Link: My book Cutting Edge PowerPoint 2007 For Dummies covers many aspects of PowerPoint 2007. A free chapter excerpt PowerPointing with the Best of Them is available on this site.
