After inserting a SmartArt graphic in
PowerPoint 2013, you can add animation to your SmartArt, you'll discover that the entire graphic animates at
the same time, it may seem that you have no control over animating individual SmartArt shapes, but that's not
entirely true since PowerPoint 2013 does provide some
control over animating SmartArt shapes. In this tutorial, you'll learn where to find those options, and how
to use them to animate a SmartArt graphic with more control:
- Select your existing SmartArt graphic, as you can see in Figure 1. The
SmartArt layout used
in this example is Basic Matrix.

Figure 1: Basic Matrix SmartArt graphic
- Now, select the Animations tabs on the
Ribbon. Locate the
Animation group, then click the down arrow (highlighted in red
within Figure 2).
Figure 2: Animation group
- This brings up the Animation drop-down gallery that you can see in Figure 3.
You can choose any of the
Entrance animations or choose the More Entrance Effects option located at the bottom of
Animation gallery (highlighted in red within Figure 3).
Figure 3: More Entrance Effects option
Tip: PowerPoint provides four animation types. To know more about animations, check the
Types of
Animation tutorial.
- This launches the Change Entrance Effect dialog box as shown in Figure 4.
Within this dialog box, if you click on any entrance effect, you can see the
live preview of how it works on
your selected SmartArt graphic. Select any of these effects and click OK. For this tutorial we
have selected the Wipe (highlighted in red within Figure 4)
entrance effect.
Figure 4: Wipe entrance effect
- This applies the selected animation to the SmartArt graphic. The digit 1 (highlighted in
red within Figure 5) indicates that the SmartArt graphic has an
animation applied. And since you see only "1" without any "2", "3", etc. You
can assume that everything is going to be animated with one click.
Figure 5: Wipe entrance animation applied to SmartArt graphic
- As soon as the animation is applied, the Effect Options button located just next to
Animation drop-down gallery is no longer grayed. Click the button to summon the Effect Options
drop-down list, as shown in Figure 6.
Figure 6: Effect Options drop-down gallery
Within the Effect Options drop-down gallery, you can choose from four Wipe animation
Directions.
Note: The Effect Options will be different for each Animation Type.
Additionally, you can choose the Sequence of the animation,
as explained below:
• As One Object: Animates the entire SmartArt at one go.
• All At Once: Animates all SmartArt shapes at one go.
• One by One: Animates SmartArt shapes one by one.
- Alternatively, click the dialog launcher (highlighted in red
within Figure 7) within the Animation group of Animations
tab.
Figure 7: Click the dialog launcher in the Animation group
- This summons a multi-tabbed dialog box with the same name as the animation applied to your SmartArt
graphic, as shown in Figure 8.
Figure 8: Wipe animation dialog box
- Within this dialog box you'll find three tabs (refer to Figure 8 above). They are:
Effect
Within this tab you can find setting for the animation effects (refer to
Figure 8 above).
Timing
This tab provides you options for changing the timing of the animation effect you
have applied, as shown in Figure 9.
Figure 9: Timing tab
SmartArt Animation
Within this tab you can find the Group graphic drop-down list
containing the same Sequence options, that are explained in point 6, earlier on this page. Additionally,
you can set the animation to play in reverse order by choosing Reverse order check-box (highlighted in
red within Figure 10).
Figure 10: SmartArt Animation tab
Click the OK button to apply the changes. Play your slide to preview the animated
SmartArt graphic.
Save your presentation.
See Also:
Animating SmartArt
in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac
Animating SmartArt in
PowerPoint 2010 for Windows