Animate a chart or table

You may find it useful to animate the elements of a chart or table. For example, you may want to discuss sales of one product throughout all the quarters of the year before going on to the next product. Or you may want to explain a table row by row.

To add animation to charts, follow these steps:

1. You can add animation to charts. Bar charts look good with a wipe up or wipe right effect.
2. Choose Slide Show> Custom Animation (in 2007, Animations tab> Custom Animation).
3. Select the chart and add animation as usual, by choosing Add Effect> Entrance>Wipe, for example. (If you don’t see the Wipe animation, choose More Effects.)
4. Click the animation’s item in the task pane, and choose Effect Options.
5. Click the Chart Animation tab.
6. Use the drop-down list to animate the chart as one object, by series, by category, or by the elements in the series or category. Usually, one of these options is what you want.

You cannot animate part of a table in this way.

Because animating charts and tables does not break them up into individual objects, you cannot animate the individual elements in their original form. For example, you might want to animate the Axis labels of a chart so that they appear one by one, along with the bars. For that, you need to ungroup them.

To ungroup a chart or table in PowerPoint 2002/2003, select it, right-click it, and choose Grouping> Ungroup (for a chart) or Ungroup (for a table). At the message asking if you want to convert the chart or table, click Yes. Click the chart or table. If you don’t see lots of objects, ungroup it again. You may want to regroup the elements that you’re animating together.

Here you see a chart after displaying the first category and axis label.

Chart after displaying the first category and axis label

The table shows the result after displaying the first three rows.

Result after displaying the first three rows

To animated part of a table or chart in PowerPoint 2007, you need to use a different method, because you can’t ungroup them.

Note: When you ungroup a table or chart, you lose effects and non-solid fills. Also, editing the contents of the table will be more difficult. You may want to make a copy of the slide first to retain the full table. You can hide the slide. To hide a slide in 2007, go to Slide Show tab> Set Up group> Hide Slide. Alternatively, you can copy the table itself and drag the copy off the slide.

Warning! Before doing this process, be sure to format the table or chart the way you want it, including the size of the text, the solid fills, and the borders. The process will convert the table to lots of individual objects and formatting them all is quite difficult.

Microsoft has provided a workaround for 2007. Here are the steps:

1. Select the table or chart and copy it to the Clipboard
2. Go to Home tab> Clipboard group and click the Paste down arrow. Choose Paste Special.
3. In the Paste Special dialog box, scroll down and choose Picture (Enhanced Metafile). This option results in a high-quality image. Click OK. Because the table was selected, the new pasted metafile replaces the original table. (A metafile is a vector type of image.)
4. With the table still selected, go to Picture Tools Format tab> Arrange Group> Group> Ungroup (or press Shift+Ctrl+G).
5. Click Yes to confirm converting the picture.
6. The table is now a grouped object, so you need to ungroup it again. Choose Picture Tools Format tab> Arrange Group> Group> Ungroup (or press Shift+Ctrl+G).

To get ready to animate the elements, first check out what you have. With a table, for example, depending on the formatting of the original table, you may have:

• A rectangle around the entire table
• Lines that create the borders along the rows and columns
• Rectangles that create solid fills for the cells
• Text boxes with the contents of each cell

You should group together elements that you want to animate together. Delete elements that you don’t need. For example, you may not need the rectangle that borders an entire table, so you can select and delete it.

To group elements, select them and choose Drawing Tools Format tab> Arrange group> Group> Group (or press Ctrl+G). When you’re doine grouping elements, you’re finally ready to animate them, as described earlier.

Related posts:

1. Animate a revolving earth
2. Designing chart titles
3. Use triggers to create interactive charts
4. Create effective graphs/charts
5. Formatting Bar Charts