PowerPoint allows you to animate any slide object that can be selected on your slide. Such objects include pictures, shapes, text,
bulleted lists, SmartArt graphics, charts, etc. You can tweak the way objects on your slides appear, move, and disappear by adding
animation. Follow these steps to add animation to a shape in PowerPoint 2016:
- Open a new presentation, and insert
a shape. Or open any existing presentation you have, and select an unanimated slide object to which you want to add animation.
Figure 1, below shows a Star shape is selected. With the shape selected, click the Animations tab of
the Ribbon (highlighted in blue
within Figure 1).
Figure 1: Animations tab of the Ribbon
Note: Although we are using a shape within this example, the same technique will work to add animation to any slide
object within PowerPoint.
- Within the Animations tab, click the Add Animation button (highlighted
in red within Figure 2).
Figure 2: Add Animation button
- This opens the Add Animation drop-down gallery, as shown in Figure 3.
Within this gallery, you'll find four animation types:
Entrance,
Emphasis,
Exit, and
Motion
Paths. If you cannot see all animations, especially the Motion Path animation types, you can scroll down to see them
all.
Figure 3: Add Animation drop-down gallery
- Within the Add Animation drop-down gallery, click any of the animation effect
thumbnails to apply the animation to the selected slide object. For this tutorial, we chose the Zoom animation effect
(highlighted in red within Figure 4) within the Entrance animation type,
as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Zoom animation effect selected
This will cause the selected slide object to animate once, so as to preview the selected animation as shown in
Figure 5.
Figure 5: Shape animating immediately after animation is added
- If you want to explore more Entrance animation effects, select the More Entrance Effects option
within the Add Animation drop-down gallery (highlighted in red within
Figure 3, earlier on this page).
- This launches the Add Entrance Effect dialog box as shown in Figure 6. Within this dialog box, the
Entrance animation effects are grouped into four different categories named Basic,
Subtle, Moderate, and Exciting. Select any one of these Entrance
animation effects and click the OK button to apply it to the selected shape. As you can see in
Figure 6, we have selected the Wheel effect (highlighted in red within
Figure 6) in the Basic category. You can also see a
live preview of the animation effect on the selected shape in
Figure 6.
Figure 6: Add Entrance Effect dialog box
Note: To view the live preview of the animation effect, the Preview Effect check-box within
Add Entrance Effect dialog box should be selected as shown highlighted in blue within
Figure 6. If the Add Entrance Effect dialog box overlaps the slide object, you can't see the effect of
the selected animation. Therefore, it is a good idea to place the dialog box in a position that is a little offset from the animated
slide object on the slide.
- You can add animation types other than Entrance in the same way. Just choose the relevant animation effect for
Emphasis, Exit, and Motion Path animations.
Tip: If your slide has more than one slide object, you can also add animation effects for all of them using the same
process. Remember that any animation added first will play first, and any animations added thereafter will play in the same sequence as
you added them. You can also change the animation sequence. Learn more in our
Re-Order Animations in PowerPoint 2016
tutorial.
Now that you have added an animation to a slide object, you can control more animation properties like
event and
speed as we will explain in subsequent
tutorial of this series.
See Also:
Adding Animation in PowerPoint 2013 for
Windows
Adding Animation in
PowerPoint 2011 for Mac
Adding Animation in PowerPoint 2010 for
Windows
Adding Animation in PowerPoint 2007, 2003, and 2002
for Windows
