Animate pictures, art, and more

You can animate just about anything in PowerPoint 2013. And it's easy to do.

What is a PowerPoint animation? I'll show you.

This slide contains four objects: text, a picture, a chart and a shape.

And each one has a different type of animation assigned to it.

Press Shift+F5 to play the slide show from the current slide.

I built the slide, so that each time I click, a different animation plays.

First, the text. This animation is called Fly In. And I have it set so that each time I click, a line of text flies in.

The picture has the Fade animation attached to it.

The chart uses the Wipe animation.

Each time I click, some bars wipe on, which makes it appear as if the bars were growing or drawing on.

And on the shape, I applied the Fill Color animation, which changes the fill color slowly from blue to orange.

So as you can see, a PowerPoint animation is nothing more than something changing on a slide.

It can be motion, a fade, a wipe, colors, or a combination.

Now, let's take a closer look at those animations. Here is the same slide with the animations removed.

To add an animation, you first select what you want to animate, choose an animation, and then modify it with effect options.

Click the text. Then go to the ANIMATIONS tab, open the Animation gallery, and select one.

You can keep trying animations until you find the one you like.

Notice that every time you select one, you see a preview. That's the default workflow for creating animations.

You make a change, then see a preview. Make another change, see a preview.

You can click here and turn off AutoPreview if you want. Then, you can click this button to preview animations manually.

If you don't find exactly what you are looking for, choose an animation that is close, and then check out the Effect Options available for the animation.

In the case of Fly In, you can choose a Direction, and then choose the Sequence that you want to bring in the text As One Object, or All at Once brings the entire block of text in at once. Or you can bring the text in By Paragraph.

Again, you can animate anything in three steps.

Select the picture, select an animation. This time, let's choose Shape and tweak it with an Effect Option.

For the shape, you can choose a shape and direction.

Select the chart, choose an animation, and choose an effect option.

Let's bring the chart elements in By Series.

Select the shape, choose an animation, then choose an effect option. In this case, we choose a color to fade to.

One more thing. If you ever want to remove an animation, just select the object that has the animation applied to it, and then click None.

With animations, you can get as complex as you want, or you can keep it simple.

Up next, we'll take a closer look at the animating text.