How to include animation in PowerPoint presentations?

In this article, you’ll learn how to add animations to a PowerPoint file, customize their settings, and define the order of effects on a slide.

Animation is about text and objects moving, flying, and jumping on a slide. This feature is different from transitions between slides.

How to add animation to PowerPoint slides?

This guide shows working with animations online in ONLYOFFICE Docs, which includes a big animation effects gallery. For free presentation editing, get the desktop app for Windows, Linux, or Mac.

Step 1. Select an animation effect

Open your presentation, select text or an object you want to make animated. Then, go to the Animation tab on the top toolbar and open the list with effects.

There are different effect types available:

• Entrance effects (green stars) determine how objects appear on a slide.
• Emphasis effects (yellow starts) change the size or color of the object.
• Exit effects (red stars) determine how objects disappear from a slide.
• Motion path sets the movement nature of an object.

Tap the appropriate effect to apply it. That’s it — you added an animation to a PowerPoint slide.

Optionally, you can select multiple effects for the same object. Click the Add animation button and choose one or more effects.

To see and adjust all active animations on your object or text, go to Animation -> Animation Pane. This timeline contains added effects.

Step 2. Specify additional parameters of an effect

Some animations have multiple subvariations. For example, when you apply the Float In effect, your object can either float up or down.

To make your choice, select an animated object and click the Parameters button.

Step 3. Set animation timing

To specify how long your animation should be displayed, change its duration. The available options are:

• Extremely slow (20 s)
• Very slow (5 s)
• Slow (3 s)
• Medium (2 s)
• Fast (1 s)
• Very fast (0.5 s)

If you want to have a pause between effects, use the Delay option. Just enter how many seconds you need.

Sometimes an animation effect must appear more than once. In this case, use the Repeat feature. You can choose between the available options or enter your value.

If the animated text or object should get back to the original position, activate the Rewind checkbox.

Step 4. Define animation order and starting time

Each effect has its number — you can find it next to an animated object or text on a slide. These numbers specify the sequence of effects.

To change the animations order, use Move Earlier and Move Later buttons.

You can also define when the effect should start. There are 3 options:

On click (default) — animation starts when you click on the slide.

With previous — an effect appears simultaneously with the previous one.

After previous — an effect appears right after the previous one.

Step 6. Preview animation

Don’t forget to check whether your animation works as expected. To do so, click Preview.

Also, run the presenation to make sure the order of animations is correct.

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How to remove animation from PowerPoint files?

If you don’t like or need an applied effect anymore, follow these steps:

• select the animated object,
• click the rectangle with an effect order,
• tap Delete.

Do animations distract?

Some people believe that moving objects may distract the audience from information on your slides and speech.

That can be true in these situations:

• most slides include animated text or objects;
• effects are illogical for the presentation content;
• effects are used for creative purposes only, not for easier content visualization.

Besides, it’s a bad idea to include animations in a presentation file for individual reading, such as lecture notes or product catalogues.

In other cases, animations even help understand information easier.