In any communications role, it is crucial to present your ideas effectively. For every message we create a context in which the message should work best, guiding our audience to listen, to gain their trust and to convince them that whatever we're communicating is interesting and worth listening to.

When using a PowerPoint presentation, there are endless ways to create this context. One way is to use animation to generate visual effects, to create surprise, joy, happiness - a design that will be memorable and remarkable.

Inspiring and attractive things work better and help focus and keep the user's attention. Memorable design increases excitement for products and brands, leading to increased engagement. In fact, a strong, reliable emotional relationship between you and your audience could be the best thing that ever happens to your career. Creating a memorable, engaging and exciting PowerPoint presentation could be the make or break point in any competitive pitch.

A PowerPoint slideshow can be made dynamic and animated using various animation effects. You can add animation to different elements on a slide including text, images, or charts. When you need to rely on technology to create a professional presentation, then you can trust PowerPoint 2010.

For example when you have to ensure that a replication of exact animation is copied from one slide to another slide, PowerPoint won't let you down. The new Animation Painter tool in PowerPoint 2010 allows you to copy creative effects you have applied to an animation and paste them to another object within your presentation.

Previously the Format Painter tool - which appeared as a paint brush icon located on the top left of the Clipboard tab - was available in Office applications. The Format Painter enabled you to create formatting on text, or a graphic, and then quickly apply the formatting to unformatted elements by selecting the desired formatting, clicking on the painter, then clicking on the unformatted elements.

Now, Microsoft has extended the format painter idea to Animation Painter to add animations in PowerPoint 2010. No more laborious animations from slide to slide, simply create the desired animation effect once, and paint it onto the other appropriate elements in your presentation. It can be left on by double clicking its command on the ribbon, just like the Format Painter.

To use Animation Painter, open your PowerPoint slideshow and add animation to a slide. Select the object to be animated. Then navigate to Animation tab and click the Animation Painter option. Clicking the Animation Painter copies the animation from the slide object. The animation painter brush will then follow your cursor around, letting you know that it's active. Now, to apply the formatting, open another slide over which animation is to be copied to. Click the object in the new slide and the animation is applied to the second slide and the Animation Painter tool is turned off again.

Clicking on the Animation Painter will activate it only for one instance: this means that you can copy the same formatting to one piece of text. However, to apply that formatting to several more slides, select that first slide again. This time, double click on the animation painter button. Then you can keep applying your copied animation by selecting more slides. To turn off the Animation Painter, press escape or click the animation painter button again.

Remember, the Animation Painter will copy all the animation features of an object to another object, another slide, multiple slides or to another presentation. This is a real time-saver as you do not have to add all these animation properties separately to each object. And the added bonus is many fewer mouse clicks. Job done, as they say in the trade.