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Keeping your audience engaged is hard piece of work, but your Microsoft PowerPoint presentation can complement your mode in many ways. One way is to highlight the current talking point, and there are many means to do this; notwithstanding, i of the easiest is to use the Abound/Shrink animation. All points showtime out the same size. When discussing a point, it grows, becoming larger and drawing the attention of your viewers to that signal. When you move on to the next indicate, the previous indicate shrinks while the new indicate grows, immediately cartoon your audience's attending to the new indicate. In this article, I'll show you how to implement this melancholia animation that requires very little setup or specialized knowledge.

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I'm using Microsoft 365, but yous can use older versions. For your convenience, you tin can download the sit-in .pptx file. They contain a slide of all the timing setups y'all'll work though, and then you lot might want to hide slides as you accelerate to the next setup to avoid having to click though them. You can't create the aforementioned timing in the browser, but the browser runs the completed animation. This article assumes you have bones PowerPoint skills, but the instructions are comprehensive.

How to add the bullet points in PowerPoint

You lot'll need a few text bullet points, similar to those shown in Figure A. If you know how to do this, you can skip this section. Otherwise, do the following:

  1. Click the Insert tab, click Text Box in the Text group, and so click and elevate a bit to insert a simple text box. Don't worry also much nearly size and position yet.
  2. Before entering text, click the Home tab and so click Bullets in the Paragraph grouping.
  3. Enter the three lines of bulleted text.
  4. Once you lot have the listing, centre it betwixt all 4 margins and increase the font size a scrap. I'm using Calibri 40.

Effigy A

With the bullet points in place, it's time to animate them.

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How to apply the blitheness in PowerPoint

That plain set of bullet points is pretty deadening, isn't it? Allow's add together the Abound/Shrink blitheness twice—in one case to grow and in one case to shrink—to all three bullet points. Fortunately, information technology'south easy:

  1. Select all the bullet points and click the Animations tab.
  2. Click the Add Animation dropdown in the Advanced Animation group and cull Abound/Shrink from the Emphasis section. If it isn't there, click More Emphasis Effects at the bottom. PowerPoint will give you a quick preview of how the animation volition look.
  3. Repeat steps 1 and ii. I know that sounds odd, only we're going to alter some of the settings in the adjacent department.
  4. Correct at present, we accept iii bullet points and two sets of the default Grow/Shrink effect, equally you tin can see in Figure B. The default setting is to grow the text by 150%. If you were to run the animations right at present, all three bullet points would grow by 150% and so those enlarged points would then increase by 150%. (If the Blitheness Pane isn't visible, click the choice in the Advanced Animation group.)

Figure B

How to fix the settings

In this department, we'll outset with the simplest timing settings to get something shut to what we're later on with our Abound/Shrink blitheness. Then, we'll adjust them in several ways. In doing so, you tin can larn how these settings relate to the animation.

To kickoff, we'll leave the first blitheness equally is: Information technology grows past 150% at a medium charge per unit and it's triggered past a click. Nosotros didn't do a matter to become those settings: Those are the defaults. To ready the growth rate for the second ready of animations–the shrinking set–do the following:

  1. Select all iii items in the second set of animations (ii with a mouse icon) and and then correct-click the selection.
  2. Choose Effect Options from the resulting submenu.
  3. In the resulting dialog, click the Outcome tab (if necessary).
  4. Click the Size dropdown, type 67% (Figure C) in the Custom control and printing Enter. Don't skip Enter—PowerPoint won't retain the new setting if you exercise. If yous desire the text to be smaller than its original size, for fifty-fifty more drama, you can enter a smaller percent. It won't marshal with the other points, but yous might similar the offset look.
  5. Click the Timing tab and choose ane seconds (Fast) from the Duration dropdown and click OK. That mode, the bullet will compress a tad faster than it grows. It won't affair this fourth dimension out, just it will later.

Figure C

To see your work and then far, select the first animation in the Animation Pane and click Play From. All three items volition grow simultaneously and and then shrink simultaneously merely a bit faster than they grew.

I want to have a minute to explicate what you're seeing in the Animation Pane. You have two mouse clicks. The first click grows the three bullets, and the 2nd click shrinks them. By default, the offset setting for the second and 3rd items for each mouse click are prepare to With Previous, which as yous tin meet, triggers all three items with a single mouse click.

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We desire to run into something a bit different, don't we? We want to meet the start item shrink while the 2d item grows. That requires a bit of rearranging. We need to move the shrink items, so they immediately follow their grow counterpart. To do and so, merely drag the three lower items up to their corresponding spots. Employ the red line that appears to help position the items correctly. The particular beingness moved will slide in under that cerise line and before the next item. Use Figure D as a guide.

Effigy D

The two mouse clicks are at the tiptop and the With Previous timed items follow. If you run the evidence now, the first item volition abound with the first mouse click—that'south all. The second click will shrink the first item and grow and shrink the 2d and third items at the same time.

At this point, y'all might exist wondering why we didn't create the items in the correct order in the offset place, correct? Nosotros could have done that just doing so would've required a lot of repetitive choice settings. This method is a flake more efficient, but more than chiefly, I hope to expose the relationships between the mouse clicks, the animations, and the start settings. The more than y'all empathize how these all work together, the easier you lot will find it to apply what you've learned to your own work.

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With all our items at present in the right sequence, grow, shrink; grow, shrink; abound, shrink, nosotros're just a simple step away from completion. Just we're going to take a detour, so you tin can see how a simple setting can change the effect.

First, let's see how things work when all start settings are On Click. To do and so, select all half-dozen items and cull On Click from the Start setting in the Timing group (on the Animation tab). When y'all run the show it takes six clicks, but as is, those clicks have purpose because they give you the most command. Past clicking, yous control when each detail grows and when it shrinks.

Second, ready all of the shrink items (two, four, and 6) to Later Previous. The animation is similar and requires fewer clicks, but yous might need to slow downwards the Later Previous setting to lucifer the word.

Allow'due south endeavour a different timing arrangement. Can you effigy out on your own at present, how to become the adjacent particular to grow while shrinking the previous? I'll give yous a flake of help. Click ane grows the first particular. You want the second click to display item 2 and shrink the first. Using Figure E as a guide, set the timing arrangements for each item as follows: Click, Click, Later Previous, Click, After Previous, Click.

Effigy E

This ane is nonetheless similar in that you motion from ane detail to the next by shrinking the current item earlier growing the adjacent. Just, y'all accept more control—you click when yous're ready to move on to the side by side point.

Let'due south have i last look at a subtle different. Change the ii After Previous items to With Previous. This timing setup is probably my favorite. The click immediately grows the adjacent item while shrinking the previous item. This exchange seems to have place a fleck quicker, but what has really changed is that the audition isn't watching the current item shrink and and then watching the side by side item grow. The two happen simultaneously.

Work on your timing

Nosotros spent a lot of time experimenting with dissimilar settings to run into how they change the Grow/Shrink animation. Doing so should aid you sympathize the sequence of events so you become the results you want when applying this animation to you own work.