As I mentioned in Part I, one of the benefits of using animation is that you can control the flow of information on your slides. For example, sometimes, in order to get your ideas across on a slide, you need objects in a slide to build. You may need one object appear first then on a mouse click, have another object appear. You can accomplish this by creating custom animations.

To add custom animation to an object on a slide:

1. Open your PowerPoint presentation.
2. Right click the object and click Custom Animation. The Custom Animation pane will appear on the right.
3. Click the down arrow on the Add Effect.
4. Point to one of the options: Entrance, Emphasis, Exit, or Motion Paths.
5. From the submenu that appears, click the type of effect you want to add.
6. Use the drop down arrow beside the Start field to choose how the effect will start. For example, if you want the object to appear when you click the mouse button, choose On Click.
7. Use the drop down arrow under Speed, to select the speed at which the effect should occur.
8. Click the Play button to see a preview of how the effect will look in the presentation.

Order of Animation

After you have setup your custom animations within your slide, you may decide that the effects appear in the wrong order. If this is the case, you can easily change the order of effects.

1. Select the appropriate slide in your presentation.
2. From the Slide Show menu, click Custom Animation. The Custom Animation pane will appear on the right.
3. Select one of the effects from the list of effects you currently have configured.
4. Use the Reorder buttons to change the order that the selected effect will appear.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until the effects are in the order that you want them to appear during the presentation.
6. Click the Preview button at any time to run the effects.