Reorder Animations in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows

By default, animation effects are numbered in the order in which they are applied to slide objects. You might need to re your animations mainly because you may have more than one animated object on a slide, and re-sequencing of animations as they happen in relation to each other may provide a better result. Or you may just want some animations to happen before the others. Also, there are logical reasons to reorder animations since typically entrance and exit animations need to be the first and last animations for any slide object. PowerPoint's Reorder option for animations lets you play with their sequencing.

Note: Reordering only works if there is more than one animation available on the Animation Pane.

Follow these steps to reorder existing animations in PowerPoint 2013:

Before you start, make a duplicate copy of your slide in the presentation -- this is easily achieved by selecting the slide in Slide Sorter view (see also PowerPoint 2013 Views) or the Slides pane, and pressing Ctrl+D. This duplicates the slide, and it's good to know that you have a copy of the slide that you can go back to just in case!
Next, make the Animation Pane visible, by accessing the Animations tab of the Ribbon and clicking the Animation Pane button, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 1.

Figure 1: Animation Pane button
This opens the Animation Pane within the PowerPoint interface (highlighted in red within Figure 2).

Figure 2: Animation Pane within the PowerPoint interface
Within the Animation Pane, select any of the animations that you want to reorder. We choose the animation added to the shape named "Isosceles Triangle", as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Animation selected within the Animation Pane
Now, click the Reorder up/or down-arrow buttons (highlighted in red within Figure 3 above) located within the Animation Pane, or the Move Earlier or Move Later buttons (highlighted in blue within Figure 3, above) within the Animations tab of the Ribbon, to re-position the selected animation in the list.

Tip: If there are plenty of animations listed within the Animation Pane, it may take lot of time to re-position them using the above mentioned buttons. In such a situation, first select the animation that you want to reorder, and then just drag it to the new position within the Animation Pane where you want it to appear.
Once you have reordered your animations, preview them to make sure that the results look like what you intended. You might have to tweak the animation events a little if reordering made some changes to them.
Save your presentation.