PowerPoint Tips & Tutorials

Text animation techniques

A subscriber asked me to write up some text animation techniques, so here are two that you might like to use. These work best when the text plays center screen and your slide doesn't contain too much else. You wouldn't use these techniques a lot, or with too much text.

Fade in variations of text, one on top of the other

This technique fades in and out three sizes and shades of a word, one after the other. You can see how it looks here.

AVI video file of animation

To create this animtion, follow these steps:

1. Insert a text box and type your text. Center justify it.
2. Click the text box's outline and copy it to the Clipboard. Paste it two times onto the slide.
3. Drag the three text boxes apart from each other. Eventually, you'll place them on top of each other, but it's much easier to select them when they're separate. Notice that I have a plain white slide and one word.
4. Change the properties of the text to create variations. I used 96, 72, and 48 point text, with light gray, dark gray, and black colors. Of course, if you want a different effect, you can do something different.

5. Choose Slide Show > Custom Animation to display the Custom Animation task pane.
6. Select the first text box and choose Add Effect > Entrance > Fade. (If you don't see the Fade animation, click More Effects to find it.) Set the Speed to fast. Leave the Start as On Click (the default).
7. Select the second text box and choose Add Effect > Entrance > Fade. Again set the Speed to fast, but this time set the Start to After Previous.
8. As soon as the second text box comes in, you want the first one to fade out. So select the first text box again, and choose Add Effect > Exit > Fade. (You may need to choose More Effects to find it.) Set the Speed to Very Fast and the Start to After Previous. (I discovered by trial and error that I wanted the Speed set to Very Fast; otherwise, you wait too long for the third text box to come in.)
9. Next, you want the third text box to fade in so select it and choose Add Effect > Entrance > Fade. Set the Start to After Previous and the Speed to Very Fast.
10. Finally, you want the second text box to fade out, leaving just the third text box. Select it, and choose Add Effect > Exit > Fade. Set the Start to After Previous and the Speed to Fast.

Note: You can always change the order of your animations by select an item in the Custom Animation task pane and dragging it to a new location or using the Re-order buttons at the bottom.

11. Save your work and test the animation to see what it looks like. Either go into slide show view or click the Play button in the task pane.
12. To center the three text boxes on top of each other, select all three text boxes. From the Draw toolbar, choose Draw > Align or Distribute > Relative to Slide.
13. Now choose Draw > Align or Distribute > Align Center.
14. Choose Draw > Align or Distribute > Align Middle.

Save and try out your animation!

Fade in variations of text, one on top of the other plus magnify

You can add another animation to your objects to increase the intensity of the animation. For example, try adding a Magnify entrance effect to all three text boxes. Set the speed the same as the Fade In animation and place the animation in the task pane right after the Fade In. Set the Start to With Previous. You can see how it looks.

AVI video of both animations

Typewriter text

You can make text appear letter by letter; to add to the effect, you can add a typewriter sound. You can see the animation here. Sorry, I couldn't include the sound.

AVI video of typewriter text.

Follow these steps:

1. Add a text box and type the text.
2. Select the text box.
3. On the Custom Animation task pane, choose Add Effect > Entrance > Appear.
4. Click the animation item in the task pane. Click the down arrow and choose Effect Options.
5. On the Effect tab, choose By Letter from the Animate Text drop-down list.
6. Set the delay between letters. I chose 0.3 seconds.
7. From the Sound drop-down list, choose Typewriter and click OK.

Try the animation. I had the following problem -- there was no clicking sound for the last letter. That might not bother you, but it bothered me. I solved the problem by adding another letter at the end of the word and making it the same color as the background (so that it was invisible). This worked!

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