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A transition is a visual (or auditory) effect applied to the entire slide and ends after the entire slide is displayed. By contrast, an animation is a visual effect applied to a specific slide object, such as the slide title, the bullet text, or an object such as an image or chart. For example, one highly useful (and so highly requested) visual effect is to display bullet points one at a time. To set that up, you create a custom animation that applies a visual effect to each bullet point.

You build a custom animation by adding effects to one or more slide elements. An effect is a visual flourish applied to the element. PowerPoint supports four types of effects:

• Entrance-These effects determine how the slide element enters the slide. Normally, each slide element displays immediately along with the rest of the slide. If you add an entrance effect to an element, however, the element displays after the slide, and usually it does not display until after you click the mouse. PowerPoint has nearly 50 different entrance effects.
• Emphasis-These effects enable you to emphasize an element by changing certain properties of the text. PowerPoint has 30 different emphasis effects, and they include applying bold or underline formats, changing the font size, adding color, and flashing the text.
• Exit-These effects determine how the slide element leaves the slide. These effects run when you navigate to the next slide. PowerPoint offers more than 50 exit effects.
• Motion Paths-These effects determine the path that the slide element follows when it enters the slide. The more than 60 motion paths offered by PowerPoint include geo­metric figures such as diamonds and trapezoids, various curves, and special paths such as a figure 1. You can also define a custom motion path by drawing it yourself.

The next few sections take you through specific examples of custom animation. For now, here are the general steps to follow to create a custom animation:

1. Select the slide with which you want to work. (Although you can apply a transition to multiple slides, a custom animation requires that you work with only one slide at a time.)

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If you want to apply a custom animation to a specific object in all your slides—for example, the title—select View, Slide Master, and then apply the animation to an object on the Slide Master.

2. Choose Animations, Custom Animation. PowerPoint displays the Custom Animation pane.
3. Select the slide element or elements that you want to animate. Note that you can apply animations to any object, including the title and text placeholders, individual bullets (select the bullet text), and objects such as text boxes, shapes, clip art, pictures, and SmartArt diagrams.
4. Click Add Effect and then select one of the four effects categories described earlier: Entrance, Emphasis, Exit, or Motion Paths. PowerPoint displays a few examples of the effects in the category you choose.
5. If you see the effect you want, click it and skip to Step 8. Otherwise, click More Effects to see the complete list of effects in that category. For example, Figure 1 shows the Add Entrance Effect dialog box, which lists the available effects for the Entrance category.


Figure 1 Click More Effects to see the full list of effects in the selected category.

6. Click an effect. If you have the Preview Effect check box activated (this is the default), PowerPoint temporarily applies the effect to the selected element.
7. When you have selected the effect you want, click OK. PowerPoint adds the effect to the Custom Animation pane and previews the effect.
8. In the Modify section of the Custom Animation pane, use the Start list to determine how the effect begins. You have three choices:
   • On Click-This option means that PowerPoint runs the animation when you click the mouse. (The effects run in order; that is, the first effect runs when you first click the mouse, the second effect runs when you click a second time, and so on).
   • With Previous-This option means that the current effect runs simultaneously with the previous effect.
   • After Previous-This option means that the current effect runs immediately after the previous effect is done.

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   If you choose After Previous, you can control the amount of time between the end of the previous effect and the start of the current effect. Click the current effect’s drop-down list, click Timing, and then use the Delay spin button to specify the time interval, in seconds.

9. In the Modify section of the Custom Animation pane, use the middle list to change the property associated with the effect. This property depends on the effect. For the Fly In effect, for example, the property is Direction (From Bottom, From Left, and so on). Similarly, for the Change Font Size effect, the property is Font Size (Tiny, Huge, and so on).
10. In the Modify section of the Custom Animation pane, use the Speed list to select a rel­ative speed for the effect (Very Slow, Slow, Medium, Fast, or Very Fast).
11. To change the order in which the effects occur, select the effect and then use the Re-Order arrows to move the object up or down in the animation order.
12. Repeat steps 3-11 to apply animation effects to other elements on the slide.

To view the animation, you have two choices:

• Click Play to play all the animations without interaction.
• Click Slide Show to start the slide show and play the animations with interaction.

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Custom animations apply to only one slide. If you are creating a complex animation for an object such as a slide title, PowerPoint does not offer a direct way to apply the animation to a title on a different slide.You can work around this limitation by copying the animated slide element, navi­gating to the other slide,and then pasting the slide element.The pasted object includes the ani­mation, so you can now copy the text from the unanimated object and then paste it into the animated object.

Figure 2 shows a slide with various custom animation effects applied. Notice the num­bers attached to some of the slide objects. These numbers represent the slide’s animation order. That is, when you click once, the animation effect runs for the objects with a 1 next to them; when you click a second time, the animation runs for the objects labeled with 2, and so on. Note also that each effect has a drop-down list. You can use that list to change various options related to the effect.

The sections that follow take you through some specific examples of custom animations.

Figure 2 A slide with a custom animation added.

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