Introduction & Opening | About the Slides & Opening Screen | Opening & Creating a Presentation
Saving/Create New Slide/Slide Design | Inserting Objects/Lists/WordArt | Edit Text/Images | Transitions & Animations
Set Up/View Presentation | Print Slides/Save to Web

Not only can you modify the appearance of text and slides, but you can also change how the slide show presents itself. The Slide Show menu gives you the ability to change how slides transition from one to the other, and you can also change the way text appears on the slide. To view this menu, go to the menu bar and select “Slide Show” and click on the expandable triangle at the bottom of the menu to view all of the features in the menu.

Please note that it's important not to go too overboard with slide transitions and animations. You don't want to make your slideshow longer than it has to be, and sometimes audiences can be annoyed by over-usage of these effects (for example, using a flying animation effect on every single word in a sentence).

Using Slide Transitions:
To keep your slide show interesting, you may want to consider applying slide transitions to your slides. A transition is an effect used to introduce slides from one to another. You can access the slide transitions by going to the menu bar and selecting Slide Show >> Slide Transition. The Slide Transition panel will appear on the right side of your screen:

Here, you can control the type of transition used, and choose to apply it to your whole slideshow or just an individual slide. If you click on a transition name, a preview of the transition will play on your screen. You can decide on a speed and duration of the transition and even add a sound for when the slide transitions from one to another. Finally, you should decide upon what sort of action causes the transition during your slideshow: a mouse click, or the passing of a certain amount of time.

Using Animation Schemes:
When you select a text box, an image object, a graph, or any other sort of PowerPoint object, you can choose to apply an animation to it. During your slideshow presentation, instead of the text just appearing on the screen regularly, an applied preset animation uses a special effect to make an object appear on the screen in some sort of action, such as "flying" or "typing" or "spinning" on to the screen. View the Animation Schemes by going to the menu bar and selecting Slide Show >> Animation Schemes.

A panel containing all of the animations you can use will appear in the “Slide Design” panel on the right of your screen:

Make sure you have selected an object. Then choose a Preset Animation from the list. If you click on an animation name, you can preview the animation on your screen.

Using Custom Animations:
If you feel like doing more advanced work with animations, you can choose to make your own special effects to apply to objects. Go to the menu bar and select Slide Show >> Custom Animation. The custom animation options will appear in the “Slide Design” panel on the right side of the screen. Play around with all of the different options until you come up with something you like. You can come up with just about any kind of combination of transitions, directions, timing, and grouping of words/letters/objects.

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