Create a swinging bell or pendulum in PowerPoint

Have you ever received a greeting card created in PowerPoint? Maybe I receive more of these than most people, but I get them several times a year.

A nice effect, especially for holiday and New Years’ greetings, is a swinging bell or pendulum. You use the Spin animation, but it has a problem for this type of effect; it spins around the center of the object you’re animating. It is, after all, a spin effect, not a swinging effect.

You can turn the Spin animation into a swinging effect with a little trick:

Insert the object or image that you want to use. I found an image of a bell and removed the background. (I used PowerPoint 2010’s background remover to do this. Cool!) Don’t worry about the image’s angle; you can change it later.

Select the object and press Ctrl+D to duplicate it.
Click the Format tab. In the Arrrange group, choose Rotate> Flip Horizontal, then choose Flip Vertical. (You want a mirror image. If your image is already vertical or horizontal and not rotated like mine, you only need to do one of these operations. For example, if the bell were upright, I would just use Flip Vertical, to make an upside-down bell.)

Move the copy so that it is exactly opposite the original.
Select both images and group them. In 2007, press Ctrl+G. In 2003, go to the Drawing toolbar>Draw> Group. As you can see, you have now changed the center of the image. In my example, the center of the image is now the top of the lower bell, just where I want it.

You need to hide the upside- down image in some way. You can:

• Move it off the slide. That’s what I did.
• Cover it with other objects
• If you’re using PowerPoint shapes, you can make the upside-down image invisible by removing the outline and fill, or making the fill 100% transparent. Even after grouping, you can click the upside-down image to select it within the group and format it separately.
• If you’re using an image, you can draw a Freeform shape over the copy and use that instead of the image. The only purpose of the copy is to move the center of the Spin animation effect to where you want it to be, so a Freeform that closely matches the outline of the image works fine. Here you see an example. Then, make the Freeform invisible.

Select your grouped object and choose Animations tab> Custom Animation. In the Custom Animation task pane, choose Add Effect> Emphasis> Spin. (You may have to choose More Effects to find the Spin animation.)
The Preview feature spins your object 360°. You probably don’t want that! Click the Custom drop-down list in the task pane, and enter an amount in the Custom text box. You can also choose to spin clockwise or counterclockwise.
In the Speed drop-down list, choose a speed. For more control, choose the animation in the list of animations, click the Down arrow, and choose Timing. In the dialog box, enter a value in the Speed text box. For example, you can enter 1.45 (in seconds). Click OK.

When you view the animation, you now see the bell swinging from its top. (Warning if you’re near others at work or your baby is sleeping nearby! The bell is loud!)