By default, animation effects are numbered in the order as they are added to the slide objects. You might need to reorder your animations
mainly because you 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 options for animations let 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:
- 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 2010 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 in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Animation Pane button
- This opens the Animation Pane within the
PowerPoint interface (highlighted in red in
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 "Cloud 5", 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 in
Figure 3 above) located at the bottom of the Animation Pane, or the Move Earlier or
Move Later buttons (highlighted in blue in 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.
See Also:
Reorder Animations in PowerPoint
2016 for Windows
Reorder Animations in PowerPoint 2013
for Windows
Reorder Animations in PowerPoint
2011 for Mac
Reorder Animation in PowerPoint 2007, 2003,
and 2002 for Windows
