PowerPoint has some incredible animation tools. Incredibly frustrating, that is. One thing that’s eluded PowerPoint animators for years has been a way to loop an animation sequence on a slide. Friends, I’m happy to announce that the wait is over. I’ve learned of a way to cheat the system!

• Fade Animation In Powerpoint Template
• Powerpoint Animation Fade In Then Out
• Animation In Powerpoint Presentation
• Free Powerpoint Animation

The problem with looping animations in PPT

A looped sequence is a repeating sequence. For example, a looping animation would go through Effect #1, then Effect #2, then Effect #3, then go back to Effect #1 and keep going until you tell it to stop. It seems like it would be super-simple to set something like this up in PowerPoint. Trust me, without knowing the trick I’m about to teach you, it’s a huge pain in the tuchus.

You see, the animation timeline in PowerPoint is stupid. It only travels from left to right, ever forward. There’s no way to isolate a set of animations, group them, and cause them to loop. So to create the illusion of looping, you’d have to repeat the animation sequence however many times you want it to loop. It can be a real drag, especially if you have a number of complicated animations, exact positioning, etc.

The answer? Bookmarks.

I’m a member of the Presentation Guild. One of the many benefits I enjoy as a member is access to the forum pages, where the best presentation designers share their ideas and inspirations. One of the Alpha Nerds, Jamie Garroch, developed an ingenious method of creating looping animations within PowerPoint by using something I’d never been aware existed: bookmarks.

To fix this, you need to fade your labels out before the transition begins; use the “Fade out” animation. Now you should have something like this example where the labels fade out before the chart animates. Here is the PowerPoint file if you want to tinker with it. The Animated Picture Fade Effect PowerPoint Template is a beautiful, professional-looking, and free template that you can use for many kinds of presentations. This template exemplifies how animations are used beautifully to enhance the slide and highlight your message or theme. Free Template with Built-in Animations.

A bookmark can be added to a video or audio file. Like bookmarks IRL, you can use these to mark interesting parts of the media. You can also use them to…wait for it…trigger animations! And the way to do it is to use bookmarks on an audio file you create that’s the same length as your desired animation loop.

How to create looping animations

Fade Animation In Powerpoint Template

Don’t be put off by the number of steps below. As with anything, writing out instructions takes much longer than actually doing it. If you’d rather learn by watching me do it, then watch this video.

You can download the PowerPoint file to see how it’s constructed.

Step 1: Create your animations

Create the animations you want on your slide. Wherever you want a bookmark to trigger an animation, select Start On Click. Use animation tools like After Previous, With Previous, Duration, Delay, etc., as you normally would.

Step 2: Make the audio file

1. Under Media on the Insert tab, click Audio then Record audio.
2. Click on the red dot (record) and remain silent for the length of your recording. The recording length is determined by how long you want the looping animation to be. When finished, click on the square (stop).
3. Click on the audio file. Under Audio Options on the Playback tab, select Volume then select Mute. Also select Hide During Show, Start Automatically, and Loop Until Stopped.

Step 3: Add bookmarks

1. Click on the audio clip.
2. In the audio controls below the clip, click Play.
3. When you reach the point where you want to make a bookmark, click Pause.
4. Under Audio Tools, on the Playback tab, in the Bookmarks group, click Add Bookmark. Note that these bookmarks cannot be changed, only deleted and remade, so choose wisely!
5. Make as many bookmarks as you have Start On Click animations.

Step 4: Use bookmarks to trigger animations

1. In the Animation Pane, move your audio file to the top.
2. Select the first animation that starts on click, then select On play…Recorded Sound – Bookmark 1 under Triggers.
3. In the Animation Pane, move all of the animations that follow up until the next Start On Click animation to be after the triggered animation.
4. Repeat steps 1–3 for as many Start On Click animations you have.

Step 5: Breaking the animation cycle

To get the animation cycle to stop and advance to the next slide, follow these steps:

1. Click on the Transitions tab in the Ribbon.
2. In the Timing section of the Transitions tab, deselect On Mouse Click
3. Select After and set the amount of time you want to stay on the slide.

Microsoft® PowerPoint users often miss the mark when trying to produce effective presentations, especially when they rely only on the software’s more rudimentary capabilities. It's no surprise; the learning curve for beginners is fairly shallow, as PowerPoint’s basic tools and menus mirror that of its Office siblings, such as the ubiquitous Microsoft Word. Most beginners quickly intuit how to input information, add slides, add pictures, adjust slide layout, change text colors and add basic lines and shapes. The resulting presentations, while serviceable, tend to be static yawn-fests for PowerPoint-weary audiences - most of whom tune out before the projector is turned on.

Adding a couple of animations to your slides can help you create more engaging presentations that communicate your message with impact and style. In PowerPoint, an animation qualifies as any element moving on or off the screen. This includes transitions, which create animated effects to move from one slide to the next, and builds, which add elements one by one to a single slide. The following pointers are based on Microsoft Office PowerPoint Office 2007 (Windows), but other flavors of PowerPoint offer the same or similar functionality. Your mileage-and menus - may vary.

Powerpoint Animation Fade In Then Out

How to Create a Custom PowerPoint Transition

To create a transition:

1. Select PowerPoint's Animations tab to reveal the Transition to This Slide menu options. By default, No Transition is selected, but there are a number of fade, dissolve, wipe, push-and-cover and stripes-and-bars options from which to choose.
2. Customize your transitions by choosing the speed (slow, medium or fast) at which slides appear, and whether or not a sound plays during the transition. These functions are located in drop-down fields to the left of the transition options.
3. Select from pre-loaded sounds, like Applause or Cash Register, or select Other Sound to pick an original sound file of your own.
4. After customizing the transition to your satisfaction (test it by clicking the Preview button), simply click the Apply to All button to enable the entire deck.

For a cohesive deck with professional polish, avoid using different transition types between each slide. Instead, try using opposite-direction iterations of a transition (a number of transitions have left/right or top/bottom counterparts). The Transition to This Slide section also lets you choose whether slides advance with a mouse click, or automatically after an elapsed amount of time.

How to Add the Custom PowerPoint Animation Effect 'Build'

Animation In Powerpoint Presentation

To create a 'build' effect:

Free Powerpoint Animation

1. Click Custom Animation button to the left of the Transitions menu. This will open a window on the right side of your screen that you'll use to manipulate your custom animation. Keep in mind that animated text and graphics must be self-contained; each element you wish to animate must be independent, such as a text box or shape.
2. Select the item to be animated, then click the Add Effect button located in the top left corner of the custom animation window.
3. From the drop-down menu, choose the Entrance, Exit, Emphasis or Motion Path the item should follow. Once you select a path, you'll see your item appear in the window.
4. Select your item, then click the arrow to the right to open a drop down menu, which will allow you to select whether the item should be animated by mouse click or in combination with (or after) the animation of another element on the slide.
5. The Custom Animation menu's Play button will let you preview your efforts.

Custom animations provide endless possibilities; experiment with the various controls, and be sure to explore the More Effects and More Motion Paths options under the Add Effect menu - it's where the real 'gee-whiz' options are found.

Keep things moving - and keep it simple

Transitions and animations are two simple-yet-effective ways to breathe new life into your PowerPoint presentations. As you explore the possibilities and refine your skills, you will likely find that you improve the pace of your presentations as well as the content. Being more selective about what information and graphics you include can help simplify your overall messaging, and adding meaningful emphasis throughout your presentations will help audiences emerge with clearer takeaways.