Motion Path Animations -- Getting Started
Author: Geetesh Bajaj
Product/Version: PowerPoint 2002, 2003, and 2007
Date Created: October 11th 2008
Last Updated: February 25th 2009
Excerpt/Capsule:.
To add a Motion Path animation to any object on a PowerPoint slide, follow these steps:
- Select the object that you want to animate -- you can select any object on a slide although animation works best on text and shapes. Alternatively, if you just want to follow this tutorial step-by-step, launch PowerPoint 2007 (2002 and 2003 should work too).
Most of the time, PowerPoint will open with a new slide in a presentation -- PowerPoint 2007 users can change the slide layout to Blank by selecting Home tab | Layout | Blank. Users of previous PowerPoint versions can choose Format | Slide Layout, and choose the Blank layout in the resultant task pane.
- PowerPoint 2007 users can choose the Home tab, and access the Shapes gallery, and then choose any shape. Click once on the blank slide to place a shape.
Users of earlier versions will find the rectangle shape option in the Drawing toolbar located below the PowerPoint interface. Select this option, and click once on the blank slide to place a shape.
- For PowerPoint 2007 users, make sure that the shape is still selected, then activate the Animations tab of the Ribbon -- next click the Custom Animation button to bring up a task pane of the same name that you can see in Figure 1.
Users of earlier PowerPoint versions can again make sure that the shape is selected. Then they should choose Slide Show | Custom Animation to access a similar task pane (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Custom Animation
- Click the Add button in the task pane -- this brings up a flyout menu that lists animation types available in PowerPoint -- choose the Motion Paths option as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Motion Paths
- This brings up another flyout menu -- choose any of the options available, or choose the More Motion Paths option to bring up the box that you can see in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Add Motion Path
- Move this box so that it does not cover the shape on your slide -- now when you select any of the prebuilt Motion Path animations in the box, you'll see a live preview of the animated shape on the slide. Play with the animations available until you find a suitable variant.
- Click OK on the Add Motion Path box to get back to the slide -- the animation is now applied to the shape.
- Save your presentation.
