Tutorial

Animations always add a bit of extra flair to PowerPoint presentations, and using motion paths can help you create unique, custom animations. In today’s presentation design, the Morph transition is the way to accomplish motion. For this Friday’s looking back post is a tutorial from 2011 on PowerPoint motion paths, because sometimes the Morph transition is not able to accomplish the needed motion. The how-to still holds up today – though we’ve added some updated images to give the post a facelift!

Motion path animations are a great feature, but using them beyond basic functions can be confusing. For example, here is the slide from an earlier timeline sample of ours:

The animation effect was great, and the design of it relied on a lot of motion paths. This is a quick step-by-step example of moving an object to two positions with motion paths.

1. The blue box is the object to move. First to area “1” and then to area “2.”

2. Moving to area “1” is easy. Select the box and add a Motion Path to the left.

3. To move to area “2” is a bit more involved. First, add a Motion Path up. Note: It is added to the existing position. During slide show the box will move to the left, then jump back to the original location and move up – not the seamless effect wanted.

4. Select the “up” motion path. Note: You must be in the Animation tab to view motion paths and select them. Then, click and drag it over so it’s green start is exactly aligned with the first motion paths red end.

5. Done. Now, the box will seamlessly move to area “1” and then up to area “2.”

Download presentation with this sample animation (17K). Note: if your browser changes downloaded file to”.zip” rename to “.pptx”.

– 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 4th, 2011 can be viewed here.

Previously we discussed how to cover sections of an image to achieve animation as different sections in this post from February 12th. The issue that we learned was that by covering the sections with white boxes, that this would be more difficult to see while reviewing in slide sorter.  The solution was to animate the images as separate elements. But how did we crop the image into 3 sections? Let’s review how. 

Insert the Image: 

• Click on the “Insert” tab in the ribbon. 

• Choose “Pictures” or “Online Pictures” to insert an image from your computer or from the web. 

• Select the image and click “Insert”. 

Once we have the original image, now we can split it into 3 sections.  

Duplicate: 

We now need to duplicate the image 2 more times. This will come in handy to have 3 images in the same position so the cropping sections will look seamless. There are a few ways to duplicate the easiest is selecting the image and PC: ctrl + c then ctrl v Mac: cmd + c > cmd + v. 

Let’s crop the first image then we will duplicate this process for the other 2 shapes. Here is a trick to map out the sections on how we are going to crop them.  

• Create a shape that’s the same height as the image 

• Next is duplicate the shape 2 more times. 

• Align the 3rd shape the right of the image > then used “Distribute Horizontally” in the ribbon tool, to evenly space out the 3 shapes equally across the image. 

Now we have a clear guide on where to crop each section. 

Crop: 

• Click on the first image to select it. 

• Go to the “Picture Format” tab that appears when the image is selected. 

• In the “Size” group, click on “Crop”. 

• Position your mouse over the cropping handles
  (the black squares around the image). 

• Drag the cropping handles inward to crop the image to the first section you want. You can adjust the cropping by dragging the handles until you’re satisfied with the section. 

• Click outside the image to apply the crop. 

Repeat for the Other Images: 

• Click on the second image to select it. 

• Follow the same steps to crop it into the 2nd and 3rd section you want. 

• Remove the 3 orange shapes as those are no longer needed as guides. 

Now we have 3 sections of the one image that we can animate individually  

Christie @ TLC 

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.

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!

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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.

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.

3. Select PICTURE OR TEXTURE FILL.

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

4. Click FILE.

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

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.).

– 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.

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.