Bonus Web Content for Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Step by Step

Related Content:
Practice Animating Slide Transitions (coming)
Add Timings to Slides (coming)
Animate Slide Content (coming)

Animate Slide Transitions

Applies to: PowerPoint 2008 for Mac

The movement from one slide of a running PowerPoint presentation to the next is called the slide transition. The default slide transition is quite simple—when you click the mouse button, the next slide appears on screen in its entirety. You can change the behavior of the incoming slide by applying an animated slide transition effect to it. For example, you can have the the new slide spin, fade, dissolve, blink, or (of course) slide into place. For most effects, you can choose to have the slide appear from any side or corner of the screen. You can apply any of 66 different slide transition effects to each slide in a presentation—as with other animated elements, however, take care that the effects don’t distract from the presentation content. It’s prudent to choose one standard transition effect for all the slides in a presentation, and perhaps choose one other effect to emphasize special content.

You apply slide transition effects from the Transitions tab of the Elements Gallery. The available transition effects are divided into these six groups:

• Fades and Dissolves, which includes transition effects such as these:
  

• Wipes, which includes transition effects such as these:
  

• Push and Cover, which includes transition effects such as these:
  

• Stripes and Bars, which includes transition effects such as these:
  

• 3-D, which includes transition effects such as these:
  

• Random, which includes transition effects such as these:
  

You can apply transition effects in either Normal view or Slide Sorter view. You can set transition effects for one slide at a time, for a group of slides, or for an entire presentation. In addition to selecting the effect, you can specify the following:

• The speed of the transition effect
• The sound associated with the transition
• Whether the transition occurs when the presenter cues it or a specific length of time after the previous transition

To apply a slide transition to one or more slides:

1. Display the presentation in Normal view or in Slide Sorter view.
2. Select the slide(s) to which you want to apply a transition effect.
3. Tip Use Shift+Click or Cmd+Click to select multiple slides, or Cmd+A to select all the slides.

3. Click the Transitions tab of the Elements Gallery to display thumbnail representations of the available transition effects.
4. Filter the effects by clicking any group.
5. Click the thumbnail of the effect you want to apply.
   PowerPoint previews the effect on the most recently selected slide.

Tip If the effect speed is set to Fast, it might not be very easy to see the effect preview.

Tip In Slide Sorter view, an animation icon below the lower-left corner of the slide thumbnail indicates that the slide has a transition effect. In Normal view, there is no visual indicator that a transition effect has been applied to the slide. This is not the same as in PowerPoint 2007 (for Windows), in which an animation icon resembling a shooting star appears in the slide pane, under the slide number. We believe this to be a bug (a defect) in the program; hopefully it will be fixed in a service pack or subsequent release.

To change the transition speed or cue, or to associate a sound with a transition:

1. Select the slide(s) to which you want to apply a transition effect.
2. At the left end of the Transitions tab of the Elements Gallery, click Options.
   The Transition Options dialog box opens.
   

3. Make your selections, and then click Apply to apply the options to the selected graphic, or Apply All to apply the options to all graphics in the presentation.

Troubleshooting Clicking Apply All applies the transition effect, as well as the transition options, to all the slides in the presentation. If you previously chose multiple transition effects, these settings will override them.