Control PowerPoint Animation with the Animation Pane

Are you building a PowerPoint deck that needs animation?

Understanding how to navigate and utilize the Animation Pane in PowerPoint is essential for adding dynamic elements to your presentations.

What Is the PowerPoint Animation Pane?

Animations are a powerful way to enhance your PowerPoint slides, making them more engaging and visually appealing. However, managing animations can sometimes feel overwhelming. The Animation Pane serves as your central hub for viewing, managing, and adjusting all animations in your presentation from one convenient location.

The Animation Pane is a sidebar menu located on the right side of your PowerPoint screen. It provides a list of every animation you apply to a specific slide.

From this view, you can easily rearrange and reorder animations, control their duration, and customize their styles. Without the Animation Pane, keeping your animations synchronized and in sequence would be quite challenging.

Accessing the Animation Pane

To get started, it’s essential to have the Animation Pane open while you work on your animations. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the Animations tab on PowerPoint’s ribbon at the top of your screen.
2. Locate the Animation Pane option on the right side of the menu and click it.

Once the Animation Pane is open, you will see a list of all animations currently on your slide. As you add new animations, they will automatically appear in the list, making it easy to manage your animations.

How to Add PowerPoint Animations

Now that we know what the Animation Pane is and how to access it, let’s explore how to use it to add animations to your PowerPoint slides. Ensure the Animations tab is selected and the Animation Pane is open.

PowerPoint animations are categorized into three groups:

1. Entrance: Controls how objects appear on the slide.
2. Emphasis: Highlights specific objects, drawing the audience’s attention to them.
3. Exit: Manages how objects disappear from your slide.

For a well-rounded slide deck, it’s beneficial to use a mix of each animation type. For this tutorial, we will work with the Soaring PowerPoint Template, a versatile template available on Envato Elements.

Adding the First Animation: The Title

Let’s begin by animating the title of Slide #3 in our template. Since the title introduces the main theme, we will apply an Entrance animation. Follow these steps:

1. Click on the text box to select it.
2. In the Animations tab, click the dropdown in the Animation gallery to see your options grouped by category.
3. Choose an Entrance animation, such as Swivel, by clicking on its thumbnail.

The selected animation will be applied to the title text box, and you will see it listed as the first item in the Animation Pane.

Adding a Second Animation: An Image

Now, let’s add a second animation to an image on the slide. The process is similar:

1. Click on the image to select it.
2. Choose an effect from the Animation gallery, and the animation will preview and be applied to the selected object. It will appear as the second item in the Animation Pane.

With both animations added, you can edit them by right-clicking on one of the animation titles in the Animation Pane and selecting Timing.

Control When Animation Starts

You can control when each animation starts, which is critical for maintaining the flow of your presentation. Use the Start dropdown to select one of the following options:

• Start With Previous: The animation starts simultaneously with the previous one.
• Start On Click: The animation begins only when you click the mouse.
• Start After Previous: The animation triggers automatically after the prior animation completes.

Click OK to save your selections. The Animation Pane makes it simple to add and manage animations effectively.

How to Resequence and Adjust Animations

Once you have added animations, you may want to adjust their sequence. Suppose you want the left image to animate first, but it is currently listed second in the Animation Pane. Thankfully, you can easily change the order:

1. Click and drag the animation in the Animation Pane to reposition it.
2. Drop it below the other animation to reorder them.

The colorful bars in the pane represent the duration of each animation. Hover over each bar to see its duration, and you can adjust it by clicking and dragging the ends.

This flexibility illustrates the power of the Animation Pane, allowing you to control animations without having to jump between different menus.

How to Add a PowerPoint Exit Animation

Exit animations are just as important as entrance animations. They help transition your audience smoothly from one idea to the next, keeping them engaged and focused.

To add an exit animation:

1. Select any object on the slide.
2. Return to the Animations tab and open the dropdown menu.
3. Scroll to the Exit group, and select an effect, such as Fly Out.

This animation will be the last one listed in the Animation Pane. You can also set its start option to After Previous to ensure it follows the completion of the last animation.

How to Use Chart Animations

Animations aren’t just for text and images; they can also enhance charts. For instance, consider a stacked bar chart where animating each series can help maintain audience engagement.

To animate a chart:

1. Click the chart to select it.
2. In the Animations gallery, choose an animation like Appear.

By default, all data in the chart will appear simultaneously. To change this, click on the Effect Options dropdown and select By Series.

Now, each data series will appear one at a time, triggered by clicks. This method allows you to present information gradually, ensuring your audience can follow along without feeling overwhelmed.

As you can see, the Animation Pane is an invaluable tool for managing animations in PowerPoint. It gives you complete control over how you present your information, allowing you to create dynamic and engaging presentations.