Tutorial

PowerPoint Animation and “Breaking” a Table

PowerPoint unfortunately does not have the capability to animated individual cells, rows or columns of tables. PowerPoint offers the ability to animate a table as a whole unit. Let’s talk about a workaround to overcome this limitation. By using the Microsoft PowerPoint BrightSlide add-in (which is free and has Windows and Mac versions!) several table formatting options become available to us, specifically the ability to break apart table cells – which we can use to achieve animation needs!

First, select the table.

Right-click on the table and go to table > BrightSlide > Split Table > Split into Rows.

For this sample table, this instantly creates 4 separate tables – one for each row! Note: I have spaced them apart for this demo.

Because PowerPoint can only animate an entire table, we now have 4 tables, which can easily be animated! As example, this table now animates in one row at time, each row on click (yay!)

As a second option, going back to our original table, we can split it by columns in a few clicks. Right-click the table > BrightSlide > Split Table > and now select “Split into Columns”.

Done – 5 separate tables, one for each column!

Apply PowerPoint animations as needed; entrance, exit, emphasis. Here I have set the table to build left-to-right automatically.

And now is where things get good! Going back to our original table, right-click > BrightSlide > Split Table > Split into Cells.

20 individual tables are created instantly!

The option to animate each cell is available, as I have done in this example. BUT, if you just need to animate on a few areas of a table, use this to create the individual cells needed for the animation (works great with Morph!). The options available are limitless now.

TIP: BrightSlide also has fantastic options to “put a table back together’. The two options are “Merge as Columns” or “Merge as Rows”. We want to make a single column, select “Merge as Rows” and it will give you 4 rows in a single column.

Continue with the same steps for the other columns, then select both, and click “Merge as Columns” to place the table back together.

BONUS TIP: Duplicate that original the table, and turn it off in selection pane to always have a secret version of the original table available for any future needs.

Troy @ TLC

By |2025-02-07T07:55:31-08:00February 12th, 2025|PowerPoint, Tutorial|

Why Are The Shadows Not Animating? – A Look back to April 2012

This is another PowerPoint how-to that was originally posted over a decade ago! You can jump back to 2012 with PowerPoint animation how-to tip. Today we see the same animation error in presentations, so this qualifies as a past, but still relevant blog post! As an addition, Amber on the TLC Creative design team, updated the PowerPoint app screen captures, from the original post, to show the current icons, and added a nice, animated gif showing the animation issue created when applying text animation to the shape and not the actual text.

Have you run into the issue of during the slide show an animated bullet list of text has the text shadow visible and then the full text animates on top of the shadow? It is a scenario that started with PPT 2007. The good news is, it is not a bug in the program and it is easy to “fix.”

Scenario

You have shadow effects on your text and a great on-click animation.

But when you view as a slide show, the shadow of the text is there before the animation! Click and the text animates on as expected – but how come the shadow was not part of the animation?

To Fix

1. Select the text box.

2. Go to FORMAT >> SHAPE EFFECTS >> SHADOW and change the selection to NO SHADOW.

3. With the text box still selected, go to FORMAT >> TEXT EFFECTS >> SHADOW and choose the shadow style needed.

4. Now when you run as a slideshow everything appears when animated!

Why

PowerPoint has always had two types of shadows: Shape and Text shadows. Way back in PPT 2003, there was really no visual difference between them (at the code level, the two shadow types were different, but when animating they just worked). Starting with PPT 2007, the difference between the two shadows types made a difference in how things are displayed. The non-animating text shadow is a most common way this shows up. Because it is a text animation, the shape shadow (even though it looks like text, if the shadow styling is applied as a Shape effect, it is a shape) has no animation applied to it.

– Troy @ TLC

This is from our Look Back series rediscovering previous blog posts with relevant PowerPoint Tips, Tricks and Examples. Original April 2, 2012 blog post here.

By |2025-01-10T17:18:11-08:00February 7th, 2025|Tutorial|

Slide Design with Image Fill Text – A Look Back to February 2015

I was a bit worried when this year-long “Look Back” series was proposed; was it going to take too much time, would there be enough previous posts, are previous posts still relevant to PowerPoint design today… Well, now I’m excited about his series as we end January! As example, this typography-themed post is from a decade ago! Though originally posted in February 2015, the slide design feature in PowerPoint is exactly the same. Therefore, the flair and creativity it can bring to slides absolutely works for presentations created today!

In this post, we are adding a visual styling to text AND keeping it editable. All text can have a color fill, gradient fill, texture fill or PHOTO/IMAGE fill. Here is my sample text slide, on a black background to help the text styling options display.

Image Fill Text 1

1. Select the text to fill (*Tip: It does not have to be all of the text in a text box, select just the text you want – this can be a great solution for adding accent focus on specific text).

2. Go to FORMAT >> WORDART STYLES section >> FORMAT TEXT EFFECTS to open the FORMAT SHAPE pane to the text formatting tab.

Image Fill Text6

3. Select PICTURE OR TEXTURE FILL.

Image Fill Text 8

4. This defaults to filling text with the first texture in the Microsoft library.

Image Fill Text 2

4. Click FILE.

5. Select an image to use as the fill – I am using an abstract image.

Image Fill Text 12

And here is the stylized text, which is editable (change the font, size, text, etc.) and can have any PowerPoint styling options applied (drop shadow, bevel, glow, etc.).

Image Fill Text 3

– Troy @ TLC

This is from our Look Back series, rediscovering previous blog posts with relevant PowerPoint tips, tricks and examples. The original post from February 18th, 2015 can be viewed here.

By |2025-01-10T09:59:18-08:00January 31st, 2025|Tutorial|

Real-Time Presenter Notes Edits Through Teams – A Look Back to September 2022

Microsoft Teams has a huge selection of tools to make life easier – including real-time collaboration! This tool is just as useful as it was when Troy first talked about it in September of 2022, and the guide he wrote is still handy today!

As a follow up to an earlier blog post (Edit Presenter Notes Live While Presenting!), I have been leveraging Microsoft Teams real-time collaboration (which I find an amazing tool!) for updating presenter notes for quite a while. The process is very easy, assuming you are running Office 365 and have a Microsoft Teams account. The presentation file is uploaded to Microsoft Teams. I open the PowerPoint file using the OPEN > OPEN IN APP, so desktop PowerPoint is used (vs. Teams or PowerPoint for Web). The SAME presentation is opened on the show computer (the computer running the slide show) and on my production computer. The only limitation is the internet connection speed (which is a constant concern while working in a hotel ballroom!). My goal is to NOT touch the show computer, I like it to just present – never lose focus on the slide show, never escape out of slide show.

I make edits on my production/design computer, and they show up on the presentation computer – including presenter notes!

-Troy @ TLC

This is from our Look Back series, rediscovering previous blog posts with relevant PowerPoint tips, tricks and examples. The original September 29th, 2022 blog post can be found here.

By |2025-01-20T14:12:30-08:00January 24th, 2025|Tutorial|

What You Do Not Know – Desktop Background Image

This is another computer setting that can make a difference in running a presentation. Set the desktop background to the meeting theme graphic so you can exit from slide show, have the audience see a meeting related image, and then seamlessly start the presentation again. Listen to the full conversation at The Presentation Podcast, episode 192.

By |2024-03-19T08:33:29-07:00March 26th, 2024|PowerPoint, Tutorial|
Go to Top