Get Things Moving In PowerPoint

From banks, to soft drinks, to cat food, animation is used in a multitude of advertising campaigns to promote a diverse range of products and services. Animated advertising, in particular, can strengthen brands and convey the same message: "We can entertain you, our product can entertain you, please buy our product."

Sometimes you really need to make your presentation come alive and the best way to do this is to incorporate movement by using animation. And animation can help promote your message in Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 by adding movement to text boxes, bullets.

There are many occasions when you might need to use the Animation function in your Slide Show, including indicating transition, ie change, or growth; to entertain your audience; and to highlight specific data or information. Some fantastic results can be shown in a simple animation depicting different stages of growth through overlapping images, for example. Or if you want to highlight figures on a sales chart, pointer shapes can be inserted in an animation as emphasis to highlight specific data.

When you feel inspired, and you are ready to create an animation in your PowerPoint 2007 document, select the object you want to animate, for example a text box or graphic. Then simply find the Animations tab on the Ribbon. On the Animate: function, you can preview the various animation effects as you move the pointer over each category.

By clicking on Custom Animation, the task pane will open on the right hand side of your screen, allowing you to animate the object you have selected. Now you can select a range of effects from: Entrance, Emphasis, Exit and Motion Paths. The More Effects option offers effects including Basic, Subtle, Moderate and Exciting.

The numbers which appear on a Custom Animation pane indicate the animation order list. Each Effect will appear in the order that you want it to and in the order it has been added. However, you can change the Effect order with ease. After applying more than one animation to a slide, you may wish to re-order them so that the title appears first and objects appear as you refer to them.

There are many other effect options for Custom Animations including sound effects or effects to dim the previous bullet points as each new bullet appears. While animations are the movements applied to objects on a slide, the movement of the slide is applied using a transition.

It's easy to modify the Custom Animation effect, by selecting the drop-down arrow beside each of the three categories: Start, Direction and Speed.

Timings are settings that allow you to automate your PowerPoint 2007 presentation. You can set the number of seconds for a specific item to show on screen and when it should start.

But there are a few rules to follow before rushing to submit your PowerPoint "demo reel" to Pixar. When animation is used for the sake of it, it's dull, it's boring and it just won't get the message across. An unnecessary animation in a PowerPoint presentation is at best irritating and at worst will completely dumb down the tone and mood of your slide show. What's the point of creating a PowerPoint presentation with eye catching graphics and well written, succinct bullet points, if you decide to add in an animation that's just embarrassing to watch?

Another point to remember is that quantity does not convey quality, and it is advisable to use only one or two animation effects throughout your presentation - too much can detract the audience from the content of your slide show. Try to select animation themes that relate to subject matter - bouncing text is not a good idea if you are presenting a serious discussion about a fall in sales figures, for example.

Likewise, when adding Transition Sounds to an animation, think carefully about what kind of message your chosen sound effect will convey. Do you really want a comical drum roll at the beginning of each new slide when presenting your findings on a controversial or sombre topic?

Animation should not be the first thing to be added to your slide show - rather it should be one of the finishing touches to a presentation. Any animation is best left until you have the slides edited and arranged in the preferred order.

In order to ensure that all the effects are going to play as you want them to, you can use the Preview option. Obviously you can review any amendments and preview again until you are happy with the Slide Show.

Some words of caution, then. Be careful to ensure that your animation is relevant to the topic and is entertaining without being annoying. One of the most common mistakes made when trying to introduce animation to a PowerPoint document is using tedious, uninteresting and irrelevant animation. Remember, there is no Skip Intro option in your presentation and your audience can easily become bored with your creation.

If you want to learn how to make your presentations entertaining and informative, enlist on a professional training course to find out how to use Animation in your Slide Shows.