HOW TO LIVEN UP YOUR POWERPOINT PRESENTATION WITH ANIMATIONS AND OTHER USEFUL TIPS
BY DENIS DREW, MD
1. Animations: a few simple rules a. Keep them as simple as needed b. Don’t try to be cute c. Should have added heuristic value d. Don’t be afraid to experiment in order to get the right animation e. Just because Microsoft created an animation doesn’t mean that it’s useful 2. Step by Step Instructions a. Any object can be animated i.e. pictures, text, links, videos, even sounds. b. Select the item you want to animate by clicking it c. A selected object should have a box around it with little white dots on the corners and center. Make sure no other objects are selected unless you want to animate a group of objects at once. d. Once you select an objects(s), click the object(s) with the right mouse button and you will get this menu: e. Select Custom Animation with the left button and the Task Pane will open up to the right. Click Add Effect and you will get a choice of four animation categories: Entrance, Emphasis, Exit, and Motion Paths. When you click on one of the categories a window shows the first 9 animations. Unless you are sure you want to select one of these 9 animations, I recommend you select “Other” which has specific advantages: it shows all of the available animations and when you click on a specific animation you will see how your object animates without it being actually being fixed as the final selection. This will allow you to run through all the animations until you find the one you want. Once you have decided on the specific animation click OK and it will be an item in the Task Pane f. If you click on the item in the Task Pane you will be able to modify the effect in various ways. “Start on click” means the effect won’t occur until you use whatever method you normally use to advance to the next slide (mouse click, space bar, Enter, etc.). Instead of advancing to the next slide the animation will occur. If you want the animation to occur automatically when the slide shows, then select “with previous”. You can add further modifications if you click the down arrow on the right of the item. 1. Add a sound to the effect. Select the volume of the sound 2. What to do with the object after it is animated 3. Select the direction, speed, and smooth start and finish if appropriate 4. Delay the start of the effect by any selected time
5. Repeat the effect by multiple selected times. 6. Under Triggers you can have the effect start when another objected is clicked however for most animations I would leave this as “Animate as part of a click sequence” g. Once you have set your animation, you can add other animations to the same object such as emphasis, exit or motions path. These can be modified in the same way i.e. start with a click or follow automatically. h. The key to understanding these animations and modifiers is to EXPERIMENT. 3. Animating Text boxes a. Text boxes, unlike other objects (pictures, movies, drawings, etc.) have two levels of selections 1. Selection of the text as individual letters. This occurs when you click inside the box. 2. Selection of the text box as a single object. This occurs if you click on the edge of the box or if you click inside the box then press the Esc button. b. Depending on which level you select, the animated items will differ. If you click on the inside of the text box then right click to select animation, once you select the animation you want you can go to the specific modification (Effect Options) as previously described and you can select how the words appear i.e. all at once, word by word, or letter by letter. Unless there is an added teaching point, I would not recommend animating each word or each letter. 4. Specific Useful Animations a. Highlight part of an article by zoom out. A specific part of an article appears to expand out. 1. Insert a picture of the article you have scanned. Once you have positioned and sized the picture to your preference make a copy of it either by choosing Edit/Copy or right click the object and select copy. Next choose Edit/Paste and a copy of the article will appear overlaying the original picture. 2. At the bottom of the PowerPoint window should be a toolbar that looks similar to this: If you don’t see it, then click View/Toolbars/Picture on the standard toolbar at the top. If it appears in the middle of your picture you can hold the left mouse key down over the left side of the toolbar then move it down to the bottom in the toolbar area. You can also move it to either side as a vertical toolbar if you wish. 3. Click the crop icon and the little white circles around the article will change to black crop indicators. Go to one of the indicators in the center of one edge, hold the left mouse key down then move to the edge of the part of the article you want to highlight. Repeat this for the other three edges of the picture. When finished click the crop icon again to unselect crop. 4. Resize the item to enlarge it (click and hold one of the corners and move out) then position it over the original article where you want it to appear. 5. Select the Zoom animation under the Entrance effects. 6. Now when you start your slideshow, when you come to this slide, the article will be there. With the next click, the part of the article of interest will appear to zoom out at the audience thus emphasizing that portion of the article. b. Highlight part of an article by underline. An underline moves across the sentence of interest. 1. Insert a picture of the article you have scanned. Size and position it. 2. On the Drawing toolbar click the line icon.
3. Click and hold the left mouse key under the beginning of the line you wish to highlight and move the mouse to the end of the sentence you wish to highlight. If the sentence continues to the next line, repeat the process for the next and subsequent lines. If you don’t see the line(s) but only see the small white dots at either end of the line then the line is the same color as your article (usually white). 4. Next select the line to color and size it. Adjust the positions of the lines (See Moving Objects by Large and Small Steps). If there is more than one line then you must group them into one object. (see Grouping objects to animate as a single object) 5. Click the following icon on the Drawing toolbar if the color is the one you want (red works best). If it’s not the color you want, click the down arrow just to the right of the icon and select the color you want. 6. Next click the line thickness icon to select the thickness of the line
7. Then animate the line(s) with the Wipe animation under Entrance category. The default animation is usually from the bottom. If so, select From Left under Direction. 8. Now when you show your slideshow, when you come to this slide and click, it will appear as if you are underlining the sentence with a red marker pen. c. Imbed another software program with Hyperlink. Allows you to run other software programs within your slide show without exiting PowerPoint (i.e., SPSS, Internet Explorer, etc.) 1. Choose an object that will start the program when you click on it. It can be a picture, text box, or a customized action button (see 6.) 2. Right click the object and choose Action settings… 3. Choose either the mouse click or mouse over tab at the top of the action settings window. Mouse over means the program starts when you move the mouse over the object without clicking. 4. Click the Run Program button then click the Browse button and browse to the program you want to run. This is usually the shortcut on the Desktop folder. If not you can search for it within the browse window by clicking on tools/search. 5. Now when you come to that slide in your show, move the mouse over the object. The arrow should change to a hand icon. When you click, the program should start up. When you close the program, you will be back in PowerPoint. 6. A custom action button can be created by clicking on AutoShapes in the Picture toolbar, selecting the button shape, then draw it by clicking and holding while moving the mouse diagonally across the screen. Once the button is created, the Action setting window should come up automatically. 7. You can also hyperlink to any slide in your program by choosing Hyperlink to, then choose Slide…, then choose the slide number you want to jump to. This is useful if you want to skip over slides that you decide not to show at the time. d. Grouping objects to animate as a single object 1. If you have several objects that you want to animate at the same time with the same animation it is useful to group them together as one object. This is also useful if you want to move or size the objects as one object.
2. While holding the Ctrl button down, click each object you want to include in the group. When you have selected the objects, release the Ctrl button and click on “Draw” in the Picture toolbar then select “Group”. As you can see you can ungroup these objects later if you decide to change them individually, however when you ungroup, you will lose the animation you created so when you regroup, you will need to do the animation again. e. Setup a default font, font color and background. You may not like the default background color, font type, font color, or font size that comes up whenever you open PowerPoint to create a new show. If you have a favorite background color, font type, font color, and font size that you usually use, you can have that come up as the default when you open a new PowerPoint. 1. Open PowerPoint. This will usually default to a white background with black font. 2. Select your favorite background color under Format/Background 3. Select Format/Font then select the font type, size and color. 4. You may want to add a logo or other item you always show on all your slides such as the UCSF logo. 5. Select File/Save as 6. At the bottom of the Save as window under save as type, select Design Template (*.pot). You may need to use the slide bar to see this selection. 7. Under file name, type Default 8. Click Save. 9. Now, whenever you open a new PowerPoint this will be the default slide to work on. 10. Whenever you want to change the default template, open PowerPoint, change the design then resave it as previously described. You can also create other templates to use by giving them another name. When you want to use the other template open the Task Pane (select View/Task Pane or use Ctrl+F1) then select Slide Design at the top. Your other template should be in the list of Other Available Templates. Just click on the right side of the Template icon and select Apply to All Slides and you’re ready to go. f. Moving Objects by large and small steps 1. Select the object by clicking on it. Remember to select any text box as an object rather than the text (see my description under Animating Text Boxes) 2. You can move the object quickly to another spot by holding the left mouse key down then moving the mouse (remember to click on the edge of any text box rather than on the letters) 3. Once the object is in the general spot you want you can make more accurate movements by smaller steps using the , , → and ← keys. 4. To make even finer, smaller movements, hold the Ctrl key down then use the arrow keys. g. Get any picture you want for free to use as an object 1. Open www.google.com and click Images just above the entry bar. 2. Type a simple one or two word description of the image you want 3. You will likely get many pages of relevant images 4. Select the image you want and see if it is good enough quality when you click See Full Size Image 5. Right click the image. If you can download it a window will come up which includes Save Image as…
6. Click this and rename the image to your choice and save it in the folder of your choice 7. Go to that file and double-click it to see if it looks just as good as the original. Sometimes the image is degraded or is just not there. 8. If this is the case then go back to the original image in Google and make sure the whole image is on your screen 9. Press the Print Screen (sometimes called Prt Scr) button usually located on the upper right hand of your keyboard. This places an exact copy of your screen into the clipboard. 10. Now you can go to PowerPoint and click Edit/Paste and the image will be pasted into your PowerPoint slide 11. This image will likely be too large and will include other elements that were on the screen such as the Internet Explorer bar so you will need to crop and resize it as described in paragraph 4.a.3. 12. If you want to save this image for future use then: 1. Click the object to select it. Make sure no other objects are selected 2. Click File/Save as… 3. Under Save as Type, use the slide bar to go to and select JPEG File Interchange Format (*.jpg). You can also select TIF, GIF, or BMP depending on your favorite image format. 4. Give it a name and then at the top of the window select where you want to save it and click Save 5. the following window will appear
6. Select Current Slide Only h. Three Useful Shortcuts. These are a combination of keys that execute useful shortcuts 1. Ctrl+A: Selects every object on your editing screen. Use this if you have many objects and you want to select all of them. If you want to select most of them, use this shortcut then hold the Ctrl button down and deselect those objects you don’t want by clicking them. 2. Ctrl+C: Copies all the selected objects into the clipboard for later use 3. Ctrl+V: Pastes all the copied objects in almost the same position usually one space down and one space to the right so you can see it if you use the command repeatedly. This is useful if you want to make multiple identical copies of an object you created instead of have to recreate the object. An example would be multiple arrows that are the preferred size, color, and shape. i. Aligning and Distributing: Move your objects exactly to the center or one side of your slide and spaces the objects equally apart. 1. Select all the objects you want to move 2. Click Draw/Align or Distribute on the picture toolbar, choose the appropriate alignment then go back and choose the appropriate distribution as indicated by the picture icons. Remember if you make a mistake or don’t like the results you can always click Edit/Undo Typing (or Ctrl+Z) to go back.
j. Customize your toolbars (get rid of the useless items; add your own useful items) 1. Most of the toolbars that are the default with PowerPoint contain some items you will never use. You can get rid of these by one of two methods. This will allow space to add useful icons. 1. Method 1 a. Right click any of the icons on the toolbar and select Customize b. Place the mouse arrow over the icon you want to delete and hold the left mouse button down c. Move the icon onto any part of your edit screen and release the mouse button d. Click Close on the Customize window when you are finished 2. Method 2 a. Click the right end of the toolbar. Click Add or Remove Buttons. Click the name of the Toolbar. A window opens showing all the icons commonly used for that Toolbar. b. Unclick all the icons you don’t want. Click all the icons you want. 2. Useful Icons to add by Method 2. Some of these may already be selected. Others you may find personally useful. I have found the following very useful. 1. Standard Toolbar a. Undo and Redo (sometime named Undo Crop and Can’t Redo). Undo allows you to go back one or more steps if you make a mistake. b. Zoom. Allows you to work on a section of your slide in more detail 2. Formatting Toolbar a. Align Left, Center and Right. This aligns your text b. Increase and Decrease Font Size c. Font, and Font size d. Increase and Decrease Paragraph Spacing 3. Picture Toolbar a. Crop, Rotate, and Compress Pictures (see k. Compress Pictures for complete description) 4. Drawing Toolbar a. Select Multiple Objects. This opens a window showing all the objects on your slide. This is useful for selecting objects that are hidden behind other objects. k. Compress Pictures. Once you have finished making and saving your slideshow, if you have inserted large (file size) objects such as pictures, Your PowerPoint presentation may be quite large (file size) which limits your ability to send it to another recipient. To reduce the file size of your presentation, click the Compress Pictures icon on the Picture Toolbar. The following window appears: Choose All pictures in document, Web/Screen, Compress pictures, and Delete cropped areas of pictures. Click OK then click File/Save. This will reduce your presentation to the minimum size but be sure your presentation is a final version as you will not be able to go back and change any cropped pictures
without having to reinsert them. If there are a lot of pictures and cropping, this can sometimes reduce your presentation by up to 50% in file size without any substantial degradation of your pictures. 5. If you have any specific problems to solve feel free to contact me at denis.drew@yahoo.com