When you view a presentation in Slide Show view, any
animations applied to slide objects
typically play when you click your mouse or press the spacebar. Another option to cause the animation to happen is by clicking a button on a
presentation remote; each of these options advances one animation at a time on a slide. If there are no more animations on the slide, clicking
will take you to the subsequent slide. While this approach works for slides that have an animation or two, you will quickly realize that this
is certainly not the way to go if your slides have tens of animations, or more. If you add that many animations to any slide, you probably
want your animations to be automatically
sequenced to happen one after the
other, or even at the same time. That's exactly where PowerPoint's Animation Events can help. PowerPoint supports three types of
Animation Events:
- On Click: This is the default animation event for any animation applied to a slide object. This animation can be played
by either clicking the left (or default) mouse button, pressing the spacebar or Next Arrow button on the keyboard, or
activating a specific button on a presentation remote control.
- With Previous: This animation event plays along with any previous animation(s) listed within the
Custom Animation tab of the Toolbox. If there are no
previous animations on the slide, this animation plays immediately after the slide transits from a previous slide.
- After Previous: This animation event plays instantly after the previous animation finishes playing on a slide. If there
are no previous animations on the slide, this animation plays immediately after the slide transits from a previous slide.
Follow these steps to change the animation event for any animation:
- Open your presentation and navigate to the slide which includes several animations. If you don't have a slide with several animations
available, consider creating a new slide with some shapes or other slide objects, then add some animations to these shapes or slide objects,
as explained in our Adding an Animation tutorial.
- You will now change the Animation Events for these animations. With the slide active, click the Toolbox
icon on the Standard Toolbar that you
can see in Figure 1 (highlighted in red).
Figure 1: Toolbox icon on the Standard Toolbar
- This summons the Toolbox
that you can see in Figure 2, below. Within the Toolbox,
access the first tab, which is the
Custom Animation tab, that you can see highlighted in red within Figure 2, below.
Within this tab, you can see all the animations applied to different slide objects on the active slide. Select the animation
for which you want to change the event.
Figure 2: Start button within the Animations tab
- To change the Animation Event of the selected animation, you can use either of these two options:
• Locate the Animation Options group within the Animations tab of the
Ribbon. Within this group, click the
Start drop-down list (highlighted in green within Figure 2). This
action opens the Start drop-down list which includes Animation Events, shown in Figure 3. These three
Animation Events are On Click, With Previous, and After Previous.
Figure 3: Animation Events within the Start drop-down list
• Alternatively, open the Timing pane within the
Custom Animation tab of the Toolbox,
as shown in Figure 4, below. Click the Start drop-down list (highlighted in
red within Figure 4).
Figure 4: Timing pane within the Custom Animation tab of the Toolbox
This opens the Start drop-down list, as shown in Figure 5, which includes the
three Animation Events explained earlier. Select the Animation Event you want.
Figure 5: Start drop-down list within the Custom Animation tab of the Toolbox
- Preview your animations by playing the slide in
Slide Show view.
- Save your presentation.
See Also:
Animation Events in PowerPoint 2016 for
Windows
Animation Events in PowerPoint 2013 for
Windows
Animation Events in PowerPoint 2010 for
Windows
Animation Events in PowerPoint 2007, 2003, and
2002 for Windows
