Transitions, animations and Morph

Good animation is like editing in a film: you don't notice it, but it guides your attention to the right place. Bad animation is a circus — every line spins in from somewhere, and the audience watches the effect instead of the content. In this lesson you will learn to use motion with a purpose: to reveal an idea step by step, to highlight what matters and to move smoothly between slides.

Transitions: from one slide to the next

1. 1
   Choose a transition

   Select a slide and pick an effect in the Transitions › Transition to This Slide gallery. The gallery has three groups: Subtle, Exciting and Dynamic Content (only the content moves, the background stays still). A small star next to a thumbnail means the slide has a transition or animation.

2. 2
   Fine-tune it

   Effect Options changes the direction (e.g. From Right for Push). In the Timing group, Duration sets how many seconds the transition takes and Sound adds a sound — use sounds very rarely.

3. 3
   Decide how the slide advances

   Under Advance Slide, On Mouse Click is the default. Enter a time in After (e.g. 00:05.00) and the slide moves on by itself after 5 seconds — useful for self-running shows.

4. 4
   Apply it everywhere

   Transitions › Timing › Apply To All gives every slide the same transition, so the show feels consistent. Check the result with Transitions › Preview › Preview.

Animations: motion inside a slide

A transition belongs to the whole slide; an animation belongs to individual objects: a title, a list, a picture, a chart. Select an object and pick an effect in the Animations › Animation gallery. There are four kinds of animation, and you can tell them apart by color:

1. 1
   Reveal a list point by point

   Select the list placeholder, apply, say, Fade and choose Effect Options › By Paragraph. Now each click reveals one point, so the audience reads the point you're talking about instead of racing ahead.

2. 2
   Choose when it starts

   Animations › Timing › Start: On Click — when you click; With Previous — at the same moment as the previous animation; After Previous — automatically once the previous one ends. Duration and Delay set the length and the wait.

3. 3
   Open the Animation Pane

   Animations › Advanced Animation › Animation Pane lists every animation on the slide in order. Drag them to reorder, or use Move Earlier / Move Later. Right-click a row › Effect Options…: here, for example, After animation can dim a point once you've covered it.

4. 4
   Add a second effect

   To give the same object a second animation, use Animations › Advanced Animation › Add Animation, not the gallery — the gallery replaces the old effect. Animation Painter copies an animation from one object to another.

Morph: magic motion

The Morph transition compares two slides and smoothly carries the objects that appear on both from one state to the other, changing their position, size, color and rotation. You get film-like motion without building a single animation. Morph is available in Microsoft 365 and in PowerPoint 2019 and later.

1. 1
   Duplicate the slide

   Select a finished slide and press Ctrl+D. Now you have two slides with the same objects.

2. 2
   Change the second slide

   On the second slide, move, resize or recolor the objects: for example, enlarge a city on a map of Azerbaijan and move the caption aside.

3. 3
   Apply Morph to the second slide

   With the second slide selected, choose Transitions › Transition to This Slide › Morph. Effect Options offers Objects, Words or Characters — the last two make text flow word by word or letter by letter.