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PowerPoint Animations: Animate Text, Objects, and Slides in Your Presentations

Working with graphic assets can bring a degree of expectancy when delivering a presentation, such as in the case of PowerPoint animations. They can help add emphasis to slide content and reveal parts of the slide gradually to help presenters discuss topics sequentially. 

As a presenting software, PowerPoint provides all kinds of animations for emphasis, entrance, exit, and to create a set motion. Join us today to learn all about animations in PowerPoint and unleash your creative potential.

Table of Contents

How PowerPoint Animations Can Benefit Presentation Design

Understanding powerpoint animation basics, types of animations in powerpoint, how to animate text on powerpoint, animating objects for visual impact, crafting seamless slide transitions in powerpoint, mastering advanced animation techniques in powerpoint, dos and don’ts of powerpoint animations, real-world use cases of animated presentation slides, recommended animated powerpoint templates, enhanced engagement and understanding through animations.

Dynamic presentations can have many benefits. The importance of such animations is often only realized by people familiar with PowerPoint. As we’ve seen in our guide on visual communication , graphical elements can make concepts more understandable. In the case of animations, we can use the transitions between slides or elements to split concepts and make them clearer.

Audience engagement is another factor, as eye-catching slides often include surprise elements hidden behind animations. These elements attract the audience’s interest and increase retention rate. In this case, animations serve as powerful presentation aids for the speaker.

Capturing Audience Attention

PowerPoint animations are more likely to capture the audience’s attention than static slides. The moving objects on-screen are the type of visuals people are likely to find attention-grabbing instead of trying to read through static slides or looking at static images. On this behalf, storytelling techniques boost their efficacy in connecting with the audience by implementing animations and transitions rather than sticking to static slides. 

Emphasizing Relationships Between Elements

Whenever we work with contrasting values, like pros and cons slides , animations help the presenter highlight areas of interest or disclose the opposite values section by section. This, in turn, structures the speech for real-time interaction with the graphical assets rather than having the audience read the slide and lose focus on the speech. 

Interactive Presentations

As mentioned before, presenters can craft compelling stories through the careful use of animations in PPT. What is often overlooked is the link between interactive presentations and animations. For instance, a speaker can deliver different outcomes of the presentation by selecting one path whose outcome is revealed through an animation. This “wow” factor induces surprise and creatively presents case scenarios.

Another option is when introducing your team in presentations. Rather than using static slides, incorporating animations gives more rhythm to the presentation and invites the public to interact with the speaker.

Getting Started with Animation in PowerPoint

To start with animations in PowerPoint, select an object you wish to animate and go to the Animations tab to choose an animation to add to the slide element. When adding animations to multiple objects in a slide, you should consider the sequence you wish to use to animate objects.

Accessing Animation Features

When accessing animation features, you will come across various animation types. By expanding the Animations menu, you can select animations for entrance, exit, emphasis, and motion paths to create a path for your animated sequence. You can also click to instantly preview an animation for the selected object or switch to slideshow mode to see how the animation will appear.

Adding Animations to Text and Objects

Once an animation is added to a text or object, a number is assigned. This number shows the sequence in which the object will be presented. For example, the object will be the first to be animated on screen, followed by two, three, and so on.

You can adjust the sequence of animations, triggers, and other settings from the Animation Pane in PowerPoint.

Timing and Sequence in Animations

The Timing menu in the Animations pane provides options to set the duration of the animation, the time to delay the animation on the screen (if necessary), and to assess if the animation starts on click, with the previous or after the last animation. How you select these animations will help you adjust the time and sequence of the animations. For example, you can use ‘ with previous’ option to show two animated objects simultaneously.

Entrance, Exit, and Emphasis Animations

Some of the most commonly used animation types fall under three categories: entrance, exit, and emphasis animations.

Entrance Animations

The Entrance Animations are meant to start or introduce objects. You can explore all entrance-related animations by going to Animations -> Animation (menu) -> More Entrance Effects . This will reveal all entrance animations you can click to preview for a selected object. These often consist of basic animations with effects like appear, fly-in, float-in, strips, wheel, circle, box, dissolve-in, split, wedge, wipe, plus, diamond, checkerboard, blinds, etc. The animations can be divided into three categories: basic, subtle, and moderate. These categories help identify the type of effects in each category according to how prominent they might be on screen.

Exit Animations

The Exit Animations are meant to help exit a slide or animated sequence to close a topic or subtopic, or to conclude the on-screen animations for a slide. These animations are similar to the Entrance Animations with the same effects. You can use these animation types for an exit sequence using effects like blinds, circles, checkerboard, box, plus, split, wedge, wipe, diamond, dissolve out, contract, swivel, fade, zoom, basic zoom, collapse, float up, etc.

Like the Entrance Animations, you can go to  Animations -> Animation (menu) -> More Exit Effects to preview the animations and to see the three categories for basic, subtle, or moderate animations.

Emphasis Animations

Other than basic, subtle, and moderate, the Emphasis Animations come with an additional category, ‘exciting.’ Emphasis animations in PowerPoint provide visual aids for emphasizing content within slides. The effects for these animation types in PowerPoint are also quite different from the entrance and exit-themed effects. Effects like fill color, grow/shrink, transparency, line color, teeter, color pulse, object color, desaturate, darken, lighten, blink, wave, and others can help emphasize an object within a slide to make it pop out before the audience.

Exploring Motion Path Animations

If primary effects aren’t what you want, it’s time to switch to Motion Paths . These are animated effects in PowerPoint that showcase objects across a specific path. In other words, these are elaborate animations that drag objects on the screen based on a particular shape or path, such as a 4,5, 6, or 8-point star, crescent moon, circle, diamond, football, heart, octagon, pentagon, square, trapezoid, teardrop, right triangle, arc (down, right, left, up), curvy right, bounce right, etc.

Motion Paths are divided into four categories. The basic effects consist of shapes, whereas, Line Curves provide lines and curves to animated objects. Similarly, the special category contains more elaborate effects such as inverted square, loop de loop, peanut, bean, curved square, etc.

Choosing Appropriate Animation Styles

When choosing animation styles, picking a style that best resonates with your presentation slides is important. The animations’ names and categories can help you identify what might work for you. Furthermore, after adding an animation, you can go to Effect Options to view the various directions and options used to refine the animation to build your sequence further. Depending on the animation type, you can pick variations of the animation, directions, colors, transparency, points to edit or lock, or other options for selected effects. The image below shows the variations for the Wheel animation in PowerPoint via Effect Options .

Similarly, if you select Transparency from Emphasis Effects, you can choose how transparent the object will appear on the screen. Likewise, many color-themed effects enable picking a custom color to animate an object.

Since Motion Paths are unique, you will get options to edit points, lock paths, reverse the direction of the default animated sequence, etc.

Now that you know how to animate in PowerPoint, it’s time to explore making written content more interesting using animations.

Start by opening a blank PPT file and adding a placeholder text. The idea is to learn how text interacts with animation effects without working with complex graphic layouts.

Select the text and switch to the Animations tab. In there, pick an animation effect of your preference. You will get a preview of the effect applied – which will show the number of the animation order once completed.

Animations for text, like any other animation, can be controlled in terms of behavior by accessing the panel at the right-most section of the Ribbon.

Additionally, we can expand the animations panel to select from the different effects offered by PowerPoint.

Animating Text Elements on PPT Templates

Animating text elements to highlight key aspects of your slides can be a great way to create engaging presentations. The Animated 3D 4 Steps & Core PowerPoint Template shown below are among the Animated PowerPoint templates at SlideModel that animate objects and text elements for emphasis while retaining a clear layout.

As visible from the animated sequence from the Animation Pane in the image below, the slide deck uses animated text boxes with a mix of other slide elements to create a sequence where a four-step diagram is highlighted with supported text to help elaborate each part of the diagram in an animated sequence. We can add, remove, or modify the included effects via the Animation Pane.

Balancing Text Animations for Impact

By balancing text animations, you can have maximum impact when highlighting content for your slides. The animations can be triggered to start simultaneously to reveal all the text after a sequence of objects, before objects appear, or one by one to reveal the diagram contents gradually.

Animating Images, Shapes, and Charts

When animating shapes and images, you can use a variety of animation types for entrance, exit, and emphasis, and to make the content pop out. However, charts require subtle animations, and it’s best to use basic effects to reveal charts, such as Appear and Disappear .

The Animated Network Diagram PowerPoint Template is an example of how to animate shapes.

The template’s title slide reveals shapes and icons in the form of a diagram in an animated sequence.

You can also include images in such a template to customize the given diagram and animate it to reveal the image simultaneously or after a set of objects has already been revealed.

If you are including a chart in your slide that is to be animated, make sure the animation corresponds to other elements that might also be animated. For example, you can trigger the chart to be revealed after the slide title with a simple Appear effect. In such a case, the chart can be displayed altogether or gradually, in animated form.

Applying Object Animations Strategically

When placing slide objects, you must apply the animations strategically to avoid revealing information out of sequence. Furthermore, it is also worth considering how your effects appear. For example, in the image of the diagram below, would you prefer the diagram to appear floating upward or downward? Such considerations and other vital elements, such as your branding needs, are important to ponder when setting your animated sequence.

Enhancing Presentation Flow with Transitions

While Animations for PowerPoint are one way of making your slides engaging, PowerPoint Transitions is another. You can access them via the Transitions tab in PowerPoint and apply transitions between slides.

While many legacy transitions provide basic effects when switching between slides, some of the more recent additions to this menu, such as Morph Transition , enable the creation of elaborate animations by using Transitions to animate your slides. The below example shows a slide with the Morph transition, giving an animated effect to the diagram.

Maintaining Coherence Between Slides

When applying Transitions, it is essential to maintain coherence between slides by ensuring they don’t overlap with any added Animations. To do this, you should preview your slide deck to see how it might appear once all the animated effects have been included in your slides. Like PowerPoint Animations, you can also use Effect Options for Transitions to set a sequence or direction that best suits your needs.

Layering for Complex Animation Effects

Using layers of multiple objects and slides can easily create advanced animation effects. This can be done using not only PowerPoint animations but also transitions. The Animated Pendulum Swing PowerPoint Templates from the SlideModel archive of animated templates use Transitions like Morph to create animated sequences. The below example shows a swinging pendulum created using Morph.

Combining and Triggering Animations

Depending on the number of elements within a slide and the animations used, you can use triggers to customize and set sequences for slide elements to animate. The example below shows the selected pendulum’s various linking options for the on-click trigger. By placing your slide objects to be connected and triggered with different parts of your slide, you can create and customize animated sequences that can be pretty attention-grabbing. 

PowerPoint Animation Painter

If you thought you had to start from scratch to animate each slide of your presentation, you are sorely mistaken. Much like the Format Painter option in PowerPoint, we can find Animation Painter , which is accessible via the Ribbon under the Advanced Animation control options.

This tool helps us duplicate animations between elements of the same slide or copy animation effects from one slide to another. As a format copying tool, it requires at least one animation effect to be placed otherwise the option is grayed out.

Creative Experimentation

Experimenting with Animations in PowerPoint can be pretty helpful to avoid making monotonous presentations. Experimentation does not necessarily require making slides from scratch, but you can also use ready-made templates such as the 3D animation PowerPoint Templates at SlideModel. Alternatively, some slide deck templates offer a considerable range of animation effects intended for maximum audience engagement, which users can quickly customize by editing placeholder areas for text, images, and logos.

Below is a list of do’s and don’ts of PowerPoint Animations for making presentations that best use animated effects.

Maintain Animation Moderation

It is essential to maintain moderation when using animations, as the use of too many animations on a single slide or presentation can make the content confusing.

Use of Appropriate Animations

Try to use appropriate animations for slide objects. The animation should suitably show if the object is to enter, exit, be emphasized, or be highlighted using a motion path.

Avoid Animation Overload

Avoid flashy animated sequences unless your presentation is meant for an audience that might find engaging, such as children in a classroom session.

Subtle can be Just as Engaging

Sometimes, subtle animations can be just as engaging as an animation with an elaborate effect. This can, in fact, be a better option than using animations that might be visually overpowering or difficult to follow due to elaborate effects.

Ensure Visual Consistency

As discussed earlier, it is vital to maintain consistency in using animated effects. Be it Animations or Transitions, using flashy effects or too many diverse effects can hurt how the audience perceives your content, as it might become confusing, visually overpowering, or unprofessional. In such a case, the audience might quickly lose interest in the presentation, leading to Death by PowerPoint.

Less is More

The design language of visual designs over the past decade or more has been intended to use fewer effects and graphical elements with ample space to make the interface look clean. Be it Modern UI or Material design apps, this design language has been evident across desktop and mobile UIs. Using the same concept, you can design your slides with fewer animations and graphical elements to make your content more visually appealing.

Turning PowerPoints into Millions

Courtney Allen, a professional PowerPoint designer who came out of a BFA in graphic design from Boise State University, had all but PowerPoint as a part of her portfolio. She started her freelancing career via Upwork, making over a thousand PowerPoints for clients, bringing in as many as $2 million. She suggests using simple designs and animations to make the most out of PowerPoint presentations. 

Guy Kawasaki Pitch Deck

Guy Kawasaki, a former Apple employee, whose famous 10-slide pitch deck has inspired a variety of PowerPoint templates. This rule was designed for startups and business presentations, focusing on pitching a concept to investors. While this isn’t directly related to using animations in presentations, it is an example of making the best use of minimalist content in a few slides. You can learn more about the Guy Kawasaki pitch deck from our article about the 10/20/30 rule for PowerPoint presentations .

How not to use an Animated PowerPoint Presentation in Court! 

Presentations with animations aren’t always a great idea. In 2014, a court in the United States criticized a PowerPoint presentation by the prosecutor, which led to the court throwing the case out. The presentation was made with sound effects and animations, with flashy elements like the bullseye. Some of the significant mistakes made by the prosecutor included ‘visual advocacy,’ where the defendant was marked with the word ‘guilt’ in the slide deck. Not to mention, the animated presentation seemed to be aimed at influencing the court using visual aids. Something that did not sit well with the court.

Use of PowerPoint by the US Military

The US Military has often been accused of Death by PowerPoint for preparing what some call the worst PowerPoint slides ever created. The issue became so profound that in 2011, it was revealed that an executive communications manager at Microsoft, Dave Karle, was tasked with ensuring that the US military could finally start using the software properly. After discussions with top military officials, an updated military presentation method was created, consisting of a number of presentation templates, tips, and graphics and more than 6000 map symbols. 

In this section, you can check some ready-made templates that can be easily customized for your presentation’s purposes. All these templates feature professionally made animation effects with native PowerPoint tools.

1. Multi-Purpose Animated PowerPoint Slide Deck

Those looking for how to animate in PowerPoint now have a ready-made solution to create mind-blowing presentations in a couple of minutes. This slide deck contains 26 slides in a broad selection of topics. We can present facts, introduce our team, our company, display charts with animated effects, and so much more. Check it out now!

Use This Template

2. Animated 8-Step Social Media Carousel PowerPoint Template

Bring dynamism to your social media posts by implementing this vivid social media carousel template. With eye-catching animated effects, this template emulates the typical carousel posts we can find on platforms like LinkedIn or Instagram.

3. Problem Solving Animated PowerPoint Template

Bring professional graphics to troubleshooting sessions with your team. This template, filled with PowerPoint animations, offers a user-friendly approach to conventional problem-solving situations in which the team has to observe the Issue Matrix, suggest possible solutions, and prepare an implementation plan and its corresponding process flow diagram. Thanks to its high-quality animation effects, the speaker can introduce the facts individually, without diverting attention from the speech.

4. Animated Company Profile Presentation Template for PowerPoint

We’ve seen this template as one of the examples of animations for PowerPoint. It is a 21-slide solution offering all the tools required for a corporate-styled company profile presentation, specifically tailored for service businesses.

5. Corporate Company Profile Animated PowerPoint Template

An alternative option for company profile presentations, featuring a minimalistic graphic layout with a broad variety of animation effects. Check these 12 slides and customize them with information relevant to your organization – we bring complex animation effects in a ready-made format. Colors and placeholder images can also be replaced.

6. Animated Roadmap PowerPoint Template

Bring more action to any planning meeting using this animated PowerPoint roadmap template. After a clear path overview, each milestone slide contains animation effects to introduce relevant information to the topic. It is a new take on traditional roadmap presentations that allows the speaker to pace themselves regarding how to disclose the information about the strategy to embark on.

7. Animated Pros & Cons Comparison Slide Template for PowerPoint

We mentioned the advantages of using PowerPoint animations to discuss contrasting values of a situation. Well, this animated Pros & Cons slide is the ideal tool for that purpose, offering a generalist view, then two accompanying slides for Pros & Cons, respectively, with animated effects to introduce additional information per point.

Using animations to make visually appealing and engaging presentations requires ensuring that your content corresponds with your added animated effects. It is always best to use animations in moderation and to keep your slides minimalist while unleashing your creativity as a presenter. Using ready-made PowerPoint templates can also help give you a good starting point to begin experimenting with animations and effects. This can also be useful for people new to PowerPoint Animations to explore what is doable with an animated slide deck, using animated sequences tailored for customization. 

Whether you’re using an animated template or making one from scratch, a preview in slideshow mode can save you a lot of trouble with potential issues tied to animated effects. Last but not least, using animations in PowerPoint isn’t always necessary, and you can even go for a simple slide deck with a handful of slides. What matters is that you should be aware of the information being presented, and the visual aids should be just to aid your slides and not meant to be the whole package on their own.

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Ultimate Guide to PowerPoint Animations: Tutorials, Templates, Tips & Tricks

Animations in powerpoint.

We have put together a massive collection of resources for PowerPoint Animations. This includes free & premium tips, tricks, tutorials and templates that you can access online to polish your slides and engage your audience.

We will cover both Custom Animations and Transitions feature in PowerPoint. This includes the new Morph Transition introduced in PowerPoint for Office 365

About PowerPoint Custom Animations

Custom Animation is a useful feature in PowerPoint. You can use it to add interaction to your slides and make the presentation more engaging for your audience. Almost any element in your slide - text, photos, graphs, shapes, audio and video can be animated.  

You can add PowerPoint animations to any of these elements in just three steps: (1) Select the object to animate (2) apply an animation, and (3) customize the effects.

Let us see how to apply animation to different parts of a presentation.

Custom animation, when used correctly can enhance the effectiveness of your message in your business presentations. #PowerPoint #Tips

4 Types of Animations 

PowerPoint offers 4 types of Animations:

• Entrance animation: Animations to make elements enter the slide.
• Exit Animation : Animations to make elements exit the slide.
• Emphasis Animation :   Animations to highlight elements on the slide and direct attention
• Motion Path Animation : Animations that make elements on the slide move from one place to another along predefined paths. 

You can add more than one animation to the same object. With this feature, it is possible to create a variety of custom animations to suit your specific requirement.

Animation can help make a PowerPoint presentation more dynamic, and the information more memorable. The most common types of animation effects include entrances and exits. 

Learn how to set up basic animations with these tutorials on Microsoft website. 

[Basic] Add Animations in PowerPoint 2016

In this easy to follow video, learn how to add animation in PowerPoint 2016. This video shows how to get started and is a primer.

Customizing Animation Effects

Once you add an animation to an object, PowerPoint offers further options to customize the animation. Each Animation effect can be controlled using the following additional settings:

Option 1: Preview Animations

Animations in PowerPoint can be normally viewed only in Slideshow mode. So if you want to preview the animations you added on a slide, PowerPoint allows you to view them using the Preview option.

Option 2: Effect Options

Some effects in PowerPoint like Fly In have additional options available. For example, Fly In animation can be set to Flyin from Left, Right, Top or Bottom of the slide. 

In addition to this, text animation can be further set to: As One Object, All at One or By Paragraph.

Option 3: Advanced Animation Effects

These options help you fine tune your animation further. You can: 

Add Animation: Add more animation effects to an object

Animation Pane: View Animation Pane to view list of animations applied on the slide and modify them.

Trigger:   Start animation on a trigger like on click of a button/text etc. to make your slide more interactive.

Animation Painter: This lesser known tool can be used to copy all the animations applied to one object and "paint" or replicate the animation to another object. This is a very useful tool to reduce the time taken to create animation effects.

Option 4: Animation Timing

The Animation timing tools allow you to control when and how the animations play. 

Start: Animations can start On Click, With Previous and After Previous

Duration: Controls how long the animation should play for. 

Delay: This feature controls how long after the previous animation the current animation should be played.

Reorder Animation: When the Animation Pane is open, you can reorder the animations and move them up or down with these tools.

5. About Animation Pane

The Animation Pane provides the list of all the animations applied to a slide in once place. You can do the following actions in the Pane:

• Change the Start option
• Edit the Effect options
• Change the Timings
• Remove the animations 
• Preview the animations

You can find out more about Animation Panes in this post from Tutsplus .

How To Preview Animations

When you put together a slide with multiple animation effects, you need to preview the animation periodically. Going to Slideshow mode every time takes a lot of time. In this video, you will find some quick ways to preview animations. All the options shared in this video allow you to preview the animation in the slide itself.

Text Animation Effects

PowerPoint animations are useful for text or bullet lists. You can make each point in your list appear one at a time as you present it.  In this section we'll explore some basic and advanced ways to present text.

Animations to Bullet Lists

When you present a list of bullet points, you can add animations to make each point exit the slide, after you finish covering it.  This post from Techrepublic shows how to add an exit strategy to bullet points in a slide. 

[Easy] Useful Animation Tricks for Bullet Points

Learn 3 useful PowerPoint Text animation tricks in the video below. The tricks you will learn are: 1. How to animate a bullet point list one by one 2. How to dim a bullet point after it is animated 3. How to make a bullet point disappear after the animation PLUS How to animate bullet points in reverse order These PowerPoint animation effects should help you make your next presentation more effective.

[Advanced] Animation Effect for Text 

Learn how to create a realistic looking effect of a hand writing text in PowerPoint. The animation looks like it was created by whiteboard animation software like Videoscribe. This popular video by Presentation Process has over 1200 Likes and 134K views. 

Find these videos useful? Please subscribe to Presentation Process YouTube channel for more:

Most people use animation only to make the bullet points appear one after another. Some advanced users make the points dim after animation. There is so much more to animation than this basic feature. In the following sections we'll see some advanced and creative uses of Animations in PowerPoint.

Picture Animation Effects

In this section you will find some creative ways to animate slides with photos. This includes photos in jpeg or png format as well as vector images in EMF, WMF or SVG format.

You can find video tutorials on how to animate Pictures and Shapes on Microsoft website.

[Advanced]  PowerPoint Zoom Animation

Sometimes when you present large pictures in your business presentation, you may be required to zoom in to your pictures to show the details. In such a situation this PowerPoint zoom effect comes in handy. You can use the animation effect to zoom into a certain step in a large multi step process, or you can use this custom animation trick to zoom in on an individual in a large group photo or zoom in on a country in a large world map etc.

[Advanced]  PowerPoint Animation to Create Videoscribe Effect

Learn to create an interesting Videoscribe effect with PowerPoint Animation within a few seconds. The effect you will learn is to have a base image and to animate it so that it looks like someone is completing a drawing on the slide. This is a great way to add engagement to your training slides.

If you would like to follow this tutorial, you can download a similar image here .

This kind of animation can be done with any wmf or emf file and can be used to explain business concepts like planning and execution or explanation of a step by step process.

Shapes & SmartArt  Animations

Autoshapes in PowerPoint can be used to create visuals for your presentation. In this section, we will see how to animate Autoshapes as well as SmartArt.

[Easy]  PowerPoint Timeline Animation

Learn to create a beautiful Animated PowerPoint Timeline Infographic with this step by step tutorial. Grab your audience attention with this easy to design slide with custom animation effect.

[Easy]  PowerPoint Animation for SmartArt Objects

When you add animation to a SmartArt graphic in PowerPoint , initially the entire graphic gets animated. But PowerPoint does provide some control over animating SmartArt shapes. To learn how to animate a SmartArt graphic with more control read this post on Indezine .

You can also see the process of animating a SmartArt diagram with the tutorial video below. The diagram we will be using is a core diagram with a circle relationship from the inbuilt PowerPoint SmartArt

The type of diagrams you can create and the animations you can apply, are only limited by your imagination. 

Watch the video above to know more

Creative Slide Design & Animation

Design 25 beautiful Slides to impress your boss & clients – using PowerPoint Tips & Tricks. Save time and improve your workflow efficiency. Suited for Beginner and Intermediate PowerPoint users.

Chart  Animations

Most business presentations have charts included in them. Many times PowerPoint charts can be overwhelming for the audience.  The reason for their overwhelm is - too much information hitting them too soon. If you learn to sequence the way you present your numbers, you make it easy for your business audience to understand your PowerPoint presentation.

This video in Microsoft support site  shows how to add animations to Charts and SmartArt. 

[Easy]  Guide to PowerPoint Chart Animation

Learn to animate your charts like a pro. In this short video tutorial, you will find how to apply custom animation to your PowerPoint charts and present information at your own pace.

[Easy]  Animate Excel in PowerPoint

Many presenters have the habit of creating charts in Excel first and then again in PowerPoint. This video shows how you can simply copy an existing chart from Excel and animate it to present your information clearly and in sequence.

Adding Interactivity 

PowerPoint animations has a trigger feature which can be used to add interactivity to your slides. These are specially useful for training and e-learning presentations.

Hyperlinks and Triggers

Triggers are like an internal hyperlink on your slide. The person viewing the presentation can control what happens next. This is useful for building multiple choice quizzes. This post from Brightcarbon provides an overview of setting up triggers & hyperlinks.

Creating Simple & Interactive PowerPoint Animated Slide

Engage your audience in training and information presentation with this beautiful slide. The slide has 4 images. On clicking on an image, the description or details relevant to that image appears next to it.

Creating Interactive Buzzers with Sound in PowerPoint

Make your training more engaging and interesting with this creative PowerPoint idea. Follow this step by step tutorial video to create an interactive PowerPoint buzzer with sound effects. You can use this buzzer to run a quiz in your classroom.

45 PowerPoint Quiz Templates Pack

Create excitement & make learning fun with games in your classroom! Gamify your classroom & generate excitement with Ready To Use PowerPoint Quiz Templates.  

Quiz templates for any type of training: Corporate Training, Universities, Schools or Freelance Training. Includes complete instructions for customizing & playing each game

Video Animation Effects

You can insert and play videos in PowerPoint. You can insert these videos from YouTube, from your PC or Storage location like OneDrive.   This tutorial in Microsoft website covers how to insert video and audio in PowerPoint.

[Easy]  Insert YouTube Video in PowerPoint

Learn how to embed an online video into your next presentation. It is a fairly straightforward option in PowerPoint 2016.

[Advanced]  PowerPoint Movie Magic with Videos, Text and Animations 

Create PowerPoint Movie Magic by using the combo of videos, text and animations. Use this technique to create slides that engage your audience. The presentation shows a car moving along a road. The windshield wiper moves across the screen. Text appears and fades away in sync with the movement of the windshield wiper. We will use the Video Bookmark option, Text Entrance and Exit Animations, and Trigger animations options to create this effect.

Using Transitions Effectively

Slide transitions are the visual movements where one slide changes into another during a presentation. They add to the professional appearance of the slideshow in general and can draw attention to specific important slides. To know how to apply and remove transitions,  read this post on Lifewire.

[Easy]  5 Tricks to Use Transition Effects in PowerPoint

Learn how to use PowerPoint slide transition effects in an interesting way to make your presentations creative.

[Advanced]  The Power of Dynamic Pan Transition Effect

Sometimes the information you want to present spreads beyond one slide. For example, an excel spreadsheet you stuck on the slide has too many columns to fit into one slide.  A map you placed on the slide is too big to be shown on one slide. If you force yourself to show the image in one page (by shrinking the size of the map), the details get too small to be clearly visible to the audience in the last row.

Learn an easy trick to overcome this situation with the video below:

Using Morph Transition 

PowerPoint Morph is a revolutionary feature available for Office 365 users. It eliminates the need for complex animation. Technically speaking, PowerPoint Morph is a transition, but in reality it can be widely used a substitute/enhancement for complex animation. Read this post from Efficiency365 for a quick overview  of this feature.

[Easy]  Animated Roadmap with Morph Transition

Learn to create an interesting animated roadmap that looks like a video. We use the PowerPoint 2016 ( Office 365 ) Morph Transition feature to create this effect. You can use this type of roadmap or timeline in almost any kind of presentation. Engage your audience by explaining and revealing the steps one by one. Link for Roadmap Image

[Advanced]  How Morph Transition Can Replace   Animation

In this video you will find how to use PowerPoint Morph Transition to replace Custom Animations. See how this can be done with this example of a slide with multiple pictures with text. You'll find how to mimic PowerPoint animation with Morph Transition and create the slides very quickly.

If you would like to learn about Morph Transition, PowerPoint Designer and other such features available in PowerPoint for Office 365, checkout the course below...

Complete PowerPoint Foundation Course

Master Fundamentals of PowerPoint from scratch. From Basics to Advanced. Includes special section on features of PowerPoint 365:

• 13.5 hours on-demand video
• For beginner & advanced users
• Online Access: Full lifetime access
• Practice Activities: Assignments & Quizzes

Animated PowerPoint Templates

Animations take time to visualize and create. You can save time by using ready to use PowerPoint Templates. In this section you will find resources and links for Animated PowerPoint Templates.

PowerPoint comes with some animated 3D templates. This includes sparkling picture frames, lively photograph albums, 3-D rotating photos, and elegant transitions between images. 

This page on Microsoft support site provides the link and details.

You can find more free animated PowerPoint Templates including for physics presentations at Presentation Magazine website. 

While these free templates are a good resource for student and non-critical presentations, business & training presentations require professional and creative animation effects. 

Ready-to-Use Professional Animation Templates

The 750+ Advanced PowerPoint Animation Templates Pack is specifically created for use in training and business presentations. It includes advanced animations for text, lists, pictures, concepts and metaphors. You can preview some of the templates from this pack below:

Animations for Bullet Points, Agenda, Terms & Definitions

Animations for Timelines, Roadmaps & Process Flows

Source:  750+ Advanced PowerPoint Animation Templates Pack

Animations for Pictures and Lists

Animations for Concepts, Metaphors, Business Ideas

And More Professionally Animated Templates to Engage Your Audience...

Make Your Presentations More Engaging without Spending Hours struggling with PowerPoint Animations...

Download 750+ Advanced PowerPoint Animation Templates Pack. Tell your story with 750+ Ready to Use & Easy to Customize Powerful Animations in PowerPoint. 

Pramod Naik

Ceo, tianjin tianshi india pvt ltd.

These ready to use animated slides are very classy and ready to use , these are very thoughtfully done .

When I have to put a point across to the team or to a larger audience , these slides greatly benefit me to make my slides sharper and to the point … one just has to visualize as to what is that you need to share to the audience and how , if you can visualize , you are bound to find that slide in this pack , if not similar , better . Secondly when you scan through the slides , the way they are made you also get ideas as to what to share to the team and audience .

Tips for Professional Animation

Here are some quick tips when using PowerPoint Animations. These will help you save time and create your animations more professionally. 

[Tip]  How to remove Custom Animations from All Slides in 1 click

When you don't want any custom animation at all in your presentation - how do you go about it? Usually you will have to go to every single slide and remove the animations. However if you wish to have on-click control on whether animations are present or now - then use this trick and get complete control over your slides!

5 Irritating Ways to Use Custom Animation

Some presenters have the habit of applying animations the wrong way. Such animations have no purpose and end up irritating the audience. Watch the video below to learn the common mistake presenters make when using custom animations feature. 

Time-Saving Tip: Using Animation Painter

Animations take a lot of time to create. Learn how to easily reuse animations applied to an object using Animation Painter tool. This video is part of the bonus tutorial videos provided with purchase of Advanced Animations Pack. 

Good PowerPoint animation makes your audience focus on the message not the animation.

Turn Presentations Into Videos

When you make a recording of a presentation, all its elements (narration, animation, pointer movements, timings, and so on) are saved in the presentation itself. In essence, the presentation becomes a video that your audience can watch in PowerPoint.  Learn the step by step process in this Microsoft support article .

[Easy]  Convert PowerPoint to Video

In this tutorial, you will find how to use save your PowerPoint file as a video. When you save the file as a video, all the animations and transitions you have used will get saved along with the file.  You would use this option of saving your presentation as videos to: - Showcase photos in a video format online/ offline - Summary or review of keys points in a presentation or training - Create a booth or kiosk presentation etc.

Free Ultimate Guide to PowerPoint Animations for tutorials, tips & more. #PowerPoint #Presentations

More Ideas for PowerPoint Animation

How to create sparkling text effect for pictures.

Learn to create a Sparkling Text Effect in PowerPoint with this step by step tutorial. You can use this effect for title animation or to highlight an important quote in a presentation.

How to create Clock Needle Animation effect

Learn how to Create Clock Needle Animation Effect in PowerPoint 2013 This is a useful animation effect to show a list, agenda items, steps in a process and more. 

Create Motion Graphics with Animation

Learn how to convert Static Pictures into Animated images in PowerPoint. Tell your story with creatively animated PowerPoint slides. The effect looks like motion graphics created in an advanced software. However, this effect uses simple custom animation effects that you can follow in any version of PowerPoint. 

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How to Add Animation Effects in Microsoft PowerPoint

Last Updated: January 31, 2022 Tested

This article was co-authored by wikiHow Staff . Our trained team of editors and researchers validate articles for accuracy and comprehensiveness. wikiHow's Content Management Team carefully monitors the work from our editorial staff to ensure that each article is backed by trusted research and meets our high quality standards. The wikiHow Tech Team also followed the article's instructions and verified that they work. This article has been viewed 449,934 times. Learn more...

You can animate text and other objects in a PowerPoint slide to add flair to your presentation. Follow these steps to learn how create animation effects in PowerPoint, as well as how to animate the transitions from one slide to another.

Animating Text or Objects

• To select a whole text box, click on the border of the text box. Powerpoint automatically distinguishes text separated by a paragraph or bullet break.
• If your Powerpoint has no objects to animate, you will need to add some .

• You can click through the animations to see a demonstration and view more animations by scrolling with the arrows on the right of the animations box.
• Entrance animations will change how an object enters the page.
• Exit animations will change how an object leaves the page.
• Emphasis animations will add movement or highlights to bring attention to an object.
• Paths determine a course of movement for an object on the page.

• This step can be repeated multiple times to add as many animations to an object as you like.

• This can be a useful tool for staying organized when working with multiple animations.

• “On Mouse Click” will hold the animation until you click the mouse.
• “After Previous” will automatically start the animation after any previous animation (or when the slide appears if there are no other animations)
• “With Previous” will play the animation at the same time as the previous animation on that slide.

• The delay begins after the selected animation action. That is if “On Click” is selected, the delay will start after the click.

• You can also click and drag animation listings in the animation pane.

• Choosing to add a sound manually will open up a window to browse for sound files on your computer, so you will need to have one handy.

Animating Page Transitions

• Select “None” on the left to remove a selected transition.
• A slide can only have one transition at a time.

• ”On Mouse Click” is selected by default.

• A higher duration means a slower transition.
• This setting only adjusts the duration of the transition, not of the slide itself.

• Choose “No Sound” from the same menu to remove any added sound effect.

Adding Animated Images and Videos to a Presentation

• You can click and drag the image to move it around on the slide once it's added.

• You must be connected to the internet during your presentation for online objects to display.

• Embedded videos can only play if you are connected to the internet during your presentation.

Community Q&A

• Click “Apply to all” on the Transitions tab to use the selected transition for all slides in a presentation. [3] X Research source Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• The activation, timing, and duration options can also be accessed in the Animation Pane by clicking the down arrow next to a listed animation and selecting the option from the menu. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Apply-multiple-animation-effects-to-one-object-9bb7b925-ab0f-47d4-bc11-85d939194bed?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US
• ↑ http://www.thewindowsclub.com/add-sound-effects-to-powerpoint-animations
• ↑ https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Add-edit-or-remove-transitions-between-slides-in-PowerPoint-2016-for-Mac-937604f5-93f8-4f96-9232-8d55d7f0bead

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What are Animations and Transitions in PowerPoint?

By: Author Shrot Katewa

PowerPoint is a powerful piece of software and it keeps getting better. With PowerPoint, you can add transitions and animations to your presentations and add a bit of flavor. But, what exactly are animations and transitions in PowerPoint?

Animations in PowerPoint are special visual or sound effects that can be applied to elements present on a slide such as text, shape, image, icon, etc. Whereas, Transitions in PowerPoint are special visual effects applied to a complete slide. The transition effects can only be seen as one slide moves to the next.

In this article, we are going to take a deep-dive into PowerPoint animations and transitions. We will be looking at the differences between the two, what each of them does, and how you can use both of them together to make your presentations really stand out. So for everything you need to know, keep reading!

What is Animation in PowerPoint?

Ok, so before we jump into the article, we are first going to discuss what exactly animations in PowerPoint are. Let’s use the text as an example. Imagine if you will, two PowerPoint presentations, each on the same slide with text.

Now imagine on the one presentation your text comes flying in and then pulsates on the screen while the other just remains dormant old text.

That is the best explanation of what animations are that I can think of. You get different types of animations in PowerPoint and we will be taking a bit of a deep-dive into what these are in the upcoming section.

Types of Animations in PowerPoint?

• Classification 1 – Intro Effects, Emphasize Effects, Exit Effects: As their names suggest, you can animate a piece of your presentation to enter or exit a slide, also to add emphasis on something. You could also use them for no reason other than to spice up the presentation.
• Classification 2 – Basic, Subtle, Moderate, Exciting: This is a broad classification as it encompasses all of the animation effects, and each of the animations under classification 1, falls under one of these.

How to Add Animation in PowerPoint?

The first step to having animations in your presentation is to first understand how to add them in. So, here’s how to add animations to any PowerPoint presentation slide in order to make them really stand out. Follow the below easy steps.

• In your PowerPoint presentation, create or add whatever it is you want to animate.
• Go to the “Animations” tab on the top and select it.
• Click on “Add Animation Pane” to open the animation pane on the right. Here you will get to see all the animation effects that are added to the slide.
• Click on your desired animation by selecting it. You can choose from the ones that appear or just to the right of that, you can select “Add Animation”.

• In the image above, you can see on the top right, a set of options. Use this to set the duration of the animation.
• Select whether you want the animation to be automatic or activated by clicking on it.
• Select the desired delay.
• Preview the animation.
• Save the presentation and you are done.

How to Animate Shapes in PowerPoint?

Animating shapes in PowerPoint allows you to animate multiple elements within a slide. If done well, this is great for giving a professional touch to your presentation that will make people remember it more effectively.

Here’s how you can animate shapes in PowerPoint in 11 easy steps!

• Add the shape to your presentation by selecting the “ Insert Tab ” in your presentation.
• Go to the “ Shapes option ” as per the picture below.

• Select the shape that you intend to add.
• Add it to the presentation by holding the left mouse button and scaling the shape.
• Click on your desired animation by selecting it. You can choose from the ones that appear or just to the right of that, you can select “Add Animation.
• Set the duration of the animation.

How to Animate Text in PowerPoint?

Let’s be honest for a second, a presentation with a lot of text might seem slightly boring but it really does not have to be. Being able to animate your text can take a presentation that has a lot of text and turn it into something that people will remember.

Animating text in PowerPoint presentations is great for the audience because it allows them to feel as if the text means more than what it is actually trying to tell them. This is always a great thing for anyone who is trying to sell a product or an idea.

So, here are my 9 easy steps on how to animate text in PowerPoint.

• Add your text to the presentation.
• Edit the text as you wish.

How to Animate Objects (such as Images or Icons) in PowerPoint?

A good PowerPoint presentation will contain a lot of images and icons. This is because, in a presentation, you need to get a message across and a lot of people, in fact, most people can remember things a lot easier by visual representation. That being said, here are my 9 easy steps on how to animate objects such as images and icons in PowerPoint.

• In your presentation, go to the “Insert” tab on the top and select it.
• Select the “Picture” option. Alternatively, you can just drag and drop an image or icon.

How to Add Animation in PowerPoint on Mac?

Although PowerPoint also works on Mac, sometimes the options are not exactly the same as they are in Windows.

So here are my steps on how to add animations in PowerPoint on Mac.

• Select the Text Box that you want to animate by clicking on it.
• Click on the “Animation Pane” to open the pane for animation on the right side of the slide.

• Click on the downward arrow as indicated in the image above.
• Choose your desired animation by clicking on it.
• Set the duration of the animation. Select whether you want the animation to be automatic or activated by clicking on it.

What are Transitions in PowerPoint?

You know that old saying that goes “first impressions count the most.” Well, that is very true when it comes to your presentations.

One of the ways to make a good first impression is to use simple but effective transitions on your presentation.

PowerPoint allows you to add transitions into your presentation. Transitions are basically visual effects that can be applied to a complete slide rather than individual elements on a slide. Moreover, the transition is only visible when you move from one slide to another.

Transitions also allow you to make your presentation look and feel better. It does this by allowing you to add transitions to every single slide or to multiple slides at once. The transition is simply the way that one slide goes out of the screen and the new one comes in.

Should You Use Transitions in PowerPoint?

You might be a little bit intimidated by transitions because you may be thinking that you aren’t a creative enough person to make the most out of them. Allow me to just stop you right there just for a moment.

Using transitions in your PowerPoint presentation is actually quite easy. Furthermore, by choosing the correct type of transition, you can actually create a positive impact on the audience.

While some feel that the transitions make your presentation look a bit “gimmicky”, but the trick is really to add a subtle transition.

Moreover, using transitions selectively can definitely make your presentation look and feel a bit more interesting.

What are the 3 Main Types of Transitions in PowerPoint?

Much like with the animations, there are three main groups of transitions and you can find these in the transitions menu in PowerPoint. For the sake of this article, I will highlight the three main groups of transitions in PowerPoint for you.

• Subtle: Still adds excitement to your presentation without being too flashy.
• Dynamic: This is a perfect balance and has the potential to add to your presentation while still being professional.
• Exciting: This is your go-to when you need to sell something or when your presentation contains a lot of text.

Having those different groups is great because we all have different personalities and we are all making presentations for different reasons. You can either choose what type of transition you want to use based on your audience or your personality, the choice is yours.

How to Add Transition to your PowerPoint?

Now, it’s time to start adding transitions to your PowerPoint presentation so allow me to give you my 9 easy steps on how to add transitions to your presentation.

• Open your PowerPoint presentation.
• Create a new slide.
• Go to the “Transitions” tab in the menu bar at the top and select it.
• You should see a row of popular transitions. Select the one you want.

• Select the transition that you want.
• Edit the duration.
• Apply a sound if applicable.

If you want to apply the same transition to all of your slides, you can just select the “Apply to all” option.

This is great if you want your presentation to be uniform. If more of your slides have the same transition but some are different, you can decrease your workload by adding the most common one to all. Then, edit the other slides individually.

How to Make Your Slides Transition Automatically?

Sometimes we don’t want to be constantly changing the slides. Perhaps we just want the slides to transition to the next slide automatically after a certain duration.

So here are my 7 easy steps on how to make your slides transition automatically in PowerPoint

• After adding your transitions and editing them, stay on the “Transitions”.
• To the top right, you will see an option called “Advance Slide”. Select the “After” option.
• Select how long you want each slide to last before it changes.

Setting up slides to transition automatically can be especially helpful when creating a presentation for a kiosk where you don’t want to keep controlling the slides throughout the day, and you perhaps want them to transition automatically.

If you are interested in knowing how to exactly loop your presentation so that it continues to play (especially to be displayed at a kiosk), then make sure you check out the other article that I wrote earlier –

Loop your PPT to Run it Automatically | Perfect Kiosk Solution

It is important to note that the speaker giving the presentation can stop the slides if he or she feels like they need more time to explain what’s going on. This is also good if they have an audience that is engaging with them, remember this is a good problem to have because an engaged audience is a good audience.

To pause an automatic slide, simply click on the presentation to pause it or, you can use the pause button if you are using a presentation remote control.

What is the Difference between Animations and Transitions in PowerPoint?

There are a number of differences between a slide and a transition. While they do both animate the presentation, they do so in different ways and they are used for completely different things. Let’s get into it.

Transitions affect the entire slide from the way it comes into focus and then leaves. When it comes to animations, they affect the content within the slide such as the text and/or charts.

You can use both of these options together in your presentations. Doing so will set your presentation apart from the standard old boring presentation that so many people put together when they are in a rush.

Final Thoughts

That just about wraps up this article, here are some of my final thought regarding this topic.

The goal of this article was not just to explain the difference between animations and transitions, it was to also encourage you to use them.

Our main goal of this website is to help you deliver the best impression with your work. So, bookmark this page and keep it as a reference.

Make sure you check out some of our other articles on the website. If you’ve perhaps got a question about presentations, we’ve most likely covered it on our website! So, be sure to check other articles out.

Set the start time and speed of an animation effect

In PowerPoint, you can control when an animation effect starts and the speed at which it happens. You can even repeat or rewind the effect to get just the right look and feel for your presentation. This article will show you a few ways to fine-tune the animations in your presentations.

Set the start time of an animation effect

You can set an animation effect to start when you click the mouse, or in coordination with other animation effects on the slide.

On the slide, click the text or object that contains the animation effect that you want to set the start timing for.

To start the animation when you click the slide, select On Click .

To start the animation at the same time as the previous effect in the list (where one click executes multiple animation effects), select With Previous .

To start the animation effect immediately after the previous effect in the list finishes, select After Previous .

Set the speed of an effect

To run your animation effect at a faster or slower pace, change the Duration setting.

On the slide, click the text or object that contains the animation effect that you want to set the speed for.

On the Animations tab, in the Duration box, enter the number of seconds that you want the effect to run.

Tip:  Smaller numbers mean the effect will run faster and will finish sooner, and larger numbers means the effect will run slower and take longer to finish.

Delay the start time

If you want to delay the start time or pause in between animation effects on a slide, you can set a delay on one or more effects.

On the slide, click the text or object that contains the animation effect that you want to set a delay for or another timing option.

On the Animations tab, in the Delay box, enter in the number of seconds that you want the effect to pause before running.

Tip:  The start of an effect’s delay period is controlled by its Start setting. For example, if an effect is set to start After Previous with a delay of 1.5 seconds, its delay of 1.5 seconds begins when the previous effect ends.

Repeat or rewind an effect

Normally, when an animated object has run its course, it stays at its endpoint and appears in its final form. You can set an animation effect (or sequence of effects) to return to its original state, or repeat.

Click the Timing tab, and do one or both of the following:

To play an animation effect more than once, select an option in the Repeat list.

To automatically return an animation effect to its original state and location on the slide after it plays, check the Rewind when done playing box.

For more information about using PowerPoint animation effects, see:

Trigger an animation effect to play

Change the playing order of your animation effects

Apply multiple animation effects to one object

Animate a set of objects as a group

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13 Sites for Free Animated PowerPoint Presentation Templates

PowerPoint remains a popular presentation app today. So, if you're looking to jazz up your slides, here are 13 sites for free animated templates.

A single animated PowerPoint template will create a more engaging presentation. But soon, you'll need another. You can save a lot of time by bookmarking a template resource that offers animated slide decks. And wouldn't it be nice if they were free, too?

Luckily, we've got you covered. Check out these free sites for animated PowerPoint templates and slide decks.

Canva is one of the most popular social design platforms out there. It allows users to create dynamic and beautiful documents, infographics, presentations, and much more. Canva has a host of tools that make it easy to develop professional designs. You can customize them quickly and easily as per your requirements.

Canva offers several animated presentation templates as well. You can edit, record, and share them right in the browser! You can also download them as PPTX files. To edit them in PowerPoint instead of Canva's browser software, follow these steps:

• Click the template you like on the search results page.
• Select Customize This Template .
• From the editor, click the Ellipsis (...) menu.
• Select Microsoft PowerPoint under the Share options.

You may be able to get free Canva Premium as a student . This opens up all of Canva's premium animated assets for you to use.

2. Envato Elements

Envato Elements is a premium website, but you can grab a total of twelve free templates for download every month. Envato Elements has a good stock of animated PowerPoint templates for meetings , as well as webinars and reports.

In addition to infographics, you can find colorful event templates. These are suitable for turning into social media stories. Envato Elements also has a collection of PowerPoint templates that are optimized for Instagram Stories as well.

3. Slidesgo

Slidesgo offers a host of free as well as premium animated templates. These files work in both PowerPoint and Google Slides. They're available in many themes, from birthday slideshows to infographics.

The templates on the site are colorful, with a fun aesthetic, and are generally well suited to events. Grade-school or high-school projects would also work well on these templates.

4. PowerPoint School

Besides a huge selection of animated PowerPoint templates, PowerPoint School offers infographics and timeline templates. You'll also find easy-to-follow tutorials to add your own animations.

Many of the templates are generic, but stylish. You'll find both colorful and minimalist ones, monochrome charts, graphs, and explainers—perfect for your next quarterly report or Zoom meeting.

5. Slideegg

Slideegg is yet another template resource. It limits free accounts to five downloads per day. Each download contains a single animated slide. On one hand, this means you might need two or more days to grab enough slides. On the other hand, mixing and matching gives you almost endless possibilities.

You can also add templates to your Wish List to save them for later. Most templates are geared toward infographics and other informational presentations. But you can still find fun animated slides for brand demonstrations and events, too.

6. SlideModel

SlideModel has a good selection of free animated PowerPoint templates. But, its search engine has no filters, making it tough to find them among the premium offerings.

The easiest way to find the free templates is to Google this string: site:Slidemodel.com “free” AND “animated” . This will bring up the array of free, animated PowerPoint files available from SlideModel.com.

7. SlideSalad

SlideSalad has several business and informational templates. They provide slick, animated designs for proposals, reports, portfolios, and more. Graduate students can also find attractive templates for thesis defense.

You will need a free account to download templates. You can set the filters to Free to see the entire collection of freely available templates. SlideSalad also has premium templates, but doesn't run on a subscription plan. Instead, you'll need to pay per-order for premium templates.

8. Presenter Media

Presenter Media offers a variety of presentation tools and resources, including professionally-designed PowerPoint templates, animated clip art and 3D animations, customizable video backgrounds, and stock images.

The 3D interactive viewer allows you to customize designs and graphics with text, images, and colors as you like. This is great for creating more engaging and interactive presentations.

With the video creator tool, you can create promotional materials, explainer videos, or other types of video content for business or personal use.

9. SlideHunter

SlideHunter mostly offers a selection of static templates, but has four excellent options available for animation. Two for communication presentations, one for social media and networking, and yet another productivity-themed slide.

You can get even more use out of these templates by adding your own PowerPoint animations. A simple transition effect can make PowerPoint's included slides blend seamlessly with SlideHunter's templates.

10. Slide Chef

Slide Chef is another free slide resource. Its templates are for Google Slides, but you can use the files in PowerPoint as well. You'll get access to a variety of templates that are good for children's lessons. The animation is sure to help hold their attention.

There are also a good many resources suitable for business, creatives, brochures, and pitch decks. You can even find scientific explainers and more generic templates, too.

11. SlidesMania

SlidesMania is a wonderful resource for slides. With access to thousands of slides, you can beam any information at any time to your audience in stunning visuals. It's widely appealing for young students and teachers alike.

While some slide decks on SlidesMania are fully animated, others only animate the cover. The style is good for childrens' lessons or holiday events.

Unlike many other templates, SlidesMania templates offer more than transitions and entrance animations. The backgrounds and decorative elements are animated, too.

12. Giant Template

Giant Template offers only one animated PowerPoint template. Yet, this template contains 30 different slides, all of them animated. Most of the graphics are stylish geometric shapes and are easily customizable.

Other graphics include pictures that you can swap out for your own photos or logos. You can re-use these classy slides by adjusting colors and swapping out some images.

13. Abert's Shop

This private Gumroad shop has several free PowerPoint templates. It specializes in infographics and charts, so it's great for explainers and business reports. Some are editable in Excel, so you can integrate your detailed charts and graphics .

All the templates are based on a "pay what you want" model, so you can enter $0.00 and get it for free. If you like it, and go back and leave a tip to support the creator.

Save Time and Money with Free Templates

With these template providers, you can prepare pitches, reports, proposals, and other in-person communications. We recommend trying them out to create professional looking presentations, creatives, and more. Simply swap some colors and images, add your text, and you're good to go!

But PowerPoint isn't just for slideshows. We encourage you to look up a few cool tips to make the most of PowerPoint template resources, for both presentations and static media like posters and flyers.

60+ Best Animated PowerPoint Templates 2024 (Free + Premium)

In this collection, we’re featuring some of the best, animated PowerPoint templates (both premium and free) to create stunning presentations filled with stylish object and transition animations.

Designing a PowerPoint presentation is not an easy job. It requires a lot of work and time. When crafting presentations, most people completely ignore one of the key elements of a creative slideshow: animation. Adding creative animations and effects not only makes your presentation slides interactive, but it’s also useful when emphasizing key points and data.

Of course, you don’t have to be a PowerPoint expert to design animated slideshows. You can simply use a pre-made animated PowerPoint template. We handpicked these templates just for you.

We’re also featuring a series of tips for creating animations and transitions in PowerPoint with some extra pointers and advice.

2 Million+ PowerPoint Templates, Themes, Graphics + More

Download thousands of PowerPoint templates, and many other design elements, with a monthly Envato Elements membership. It starts at $16 per month, and gives you unlimited access to a growing library of over 2,000,000 presentation templates, fonts, photos, graphics, and more.

Pitch PowerPoint

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Explore PowerPoint Templates

Happines – Animated PowerPoint Template

Happines is a modern PowerPoint template that features a colorful and attractive design. All of the slides in this template are fully animated with just the right effects so you won’t have to spend any extra time adding animations.

This PowerPoint template also comes with 30 unique slides. You’ll also be able to choose from 5 different color schemes to create stylish presentations.

Why This Is A Top Pick

In addition to its beautiful slide design that comes filled with animations, the template also includes lots of editable vector graphics, illustrations, and infographics. Which makes it a great choice for making professional presentations.

Cover – Modern Animated PowerPoint Template

Cover is a modern and visual-centric PowerPoint template that features a set of unique slide designs. This template is perfect for your creative agency and marketing presentations. It includes more than 20 slides with customizable elements and animations.

Animated PowerPoint Presentation for Business

This PowerPoint template features a multipurpose design with lots of modern and stylish slides to choose from. It’s ideal for making every kind of presentation from business meeting slideshows to startup pitch decks and more.

Business Finance Animated PowerPoint Infographics

Showcasing and highlighting your business finance reports in presentations will get much easier with the help of this template. It includes 20 different infographic slides for creating beautiful graphics for finance stats and data.

Business Comparison PowerPoint Infographics Template

You can use this PowerPoint template to create cool slides that compare products, features, and competitors in visual form. There are 20 unique slide layouts in this template filled with colorful illustrations, icons, and graphics. You can easily customize them to your preference.

Free Business Proposal Animated PPT Template

Planning on organizing a business trip? Then you can use this free PowerPoint template to create a presentation for the meeting. It comes with 30 slides. You can also customize it to create other types of presentations.

Kukuh – Animated Business PowerPoint Template

The stylishly dark and modern design of this PowerPoint template makes it an ideal choice for creating presentations for luxury brands and high-end businesses. It has 39 unique slides with fully customizable layouts, including editable graphics, colors, and fonts.

Colopen – Animated Creative PowerPoint Template

Colopen is a creative PowerPoint template that you can use to make various agency and marketing presentations. It’s especially great for presenting projects and business profiles. The template includes 30 unique slides that come in 5 different color schemes.

Bravo – Animated Pitch Deck PowerPoint Template

This PowerPoint template has the perfect design for making bold and attractive business presentations. It includes fully animated slides full of stylish designs, infographics, editable vector graphics, icons, and more. There are more than 35 slide layouts in this template.

Business Diagrams Animated PowerPoint Slides

You will never run out of unique diagram designs for your business presentations when you have this PowerPoint template. It has 17 unique diagram designs that are available in 12 different color schemes. Each infographic is handmade to perfection.

Free Business Meeting Animated PowerPoint Template

This free PowerPoint template is most suitable for crafting presentations for business meetings. It features a clean and minimal slide design with beautifully animated objects and transitions. There are 13 slides included in the template.

Clean Business Presentation PowerPoint Template

Create modern business presentations with clean slides using this PowerPoint template. It features 40 unique slides with editable graphics, charts, and transition animations. You can also choose from 10 different color themes for the template.

Scrum PowerPoint Infographics Animated Template

Use these PowerPoint slides to present your Scrum solutions for business problems in a professional way. It includes more than 20 slides with unique infographics and customizable elements.

Startup Slides Animated PowerPoint Templates

This PowerPoint template includes several beautiful slides featuring illustrations and graphics especially made for startups and small businesses. The colors, fonts, images, and everything on each slide can be customized to your preference.

Technology Infographics Animated PowerPoint Template

With this PowerPoint template, you can design minimal slideshows for technology-related presentations. There are over 20 slides included in the template with several different styles of designs.

Marketing Campaign Free Animated PowerPoint Template

This is a free PowerPoint template you can use for making modern marketing presentations. It’s especially suitable for digital agencies and brands. The template includes 32 different slides.

Chrono – Creative Agency PowerPoint Template

For an effortlessly stylish presentation, consider Chrome. It’s a beautifully designed PowerPoint template that will captivate your audience at a glance. This animated template offers a range of fully customizable slides, color variations, and picture-perfect illustrations.

Evolve – Animated PowerPoint Template

Evolve is an animated PowerPoint template that exudes elegance in each of its 40 slides. It comes in both animated, and non-animated versions, allowing you to choose the one that best fits your needs. There is also a choice between light and dark color themes.

Puzzle – Animated PowerPoint Template

Puzzle is an infographic PowerPoint template fitting to a large pool of business purposes. Whether you need a presentation to discuss the business processes, marketing steps, or timeline, this animated template surely deserves a spot in your PowerPoint resource kit.

Move – Animated PowerPoint Template

Move is a multipurpose PowerPoint template featuring 144 animated slides, drag, and drop picture placeholder, free fonts, and a lot more. Ideal for modern presentations Move is worth giving a shot or adding to your shortlist at the very least.

Minimal Infographic PowerPoint Template

Next up we have a minimalistic template purpose-built for data visualization presentations. It comprises 18 fully animated slides, a range of color themes to choose from, and vector shapes. All elements can be easily edited in Microsoft PowerPoint, and a dark version comes included.

Diagrams – Animated PowerPoint Template

If you’re looking for an animated PowerPoint template with lots of diagrams, check out the above featured product. It consists of 18 fully animated slides that can be customized to your specific requirements in no time at all.

Metrolica – Animated PowerPoint Template

Metrolica is a modern, and professional template that can be used for virtually any purpose under the sun. It’s a solid choice for anyone looking to add the best animated PowerPoint templates to their collection. Grab it now.

Edi – Animated PowerPoint Template

Designed for creative professionals, Edi is a minimal yet eye-catching template that’s sure to create an impression. It comes with both animated and non-animated slides, fully customizable to your brand’s aesthetic, and image.

Doodle – Animated PowerPoint Template

Here we have another template that is set with pyramid, goal, circles and other abstract elements. Add it to your shortlist ASAP.

Business Pro – Animated PowerPoint Template

Business Pro is a radical PowerPoint template made for businesses. It comes fully loaded with transition animations and a total of 150 slide designs while keeping its professional looks. You’ll also be able to choose the slides from 5 different color schemes as well.

The Mnml – Minimal PowerPoint Template

The Mnml features a set of slides with minimal designs. The template includes 30 unique slide layouts. Each slide is available in 5 different color schemes. Along with master slides, image placeholders, and more to let you easily customize the slides.

Fecestyle – Modern Animated PowerPoint Template

A modern PowerPoint template featuring creative slide designs and transition animations. This template is perfect for creatives and freelancers for making presentations to highlight your skills and promote services. It includes 150 slides.

Shining – Creative Animated PowerPoint Template

Shining is an animated PowerPoint template that comes with 30 unique slides. The slides are available in 5 different color schemes. It also features master slide layouts, animations, editable graphics, illustrations, and much more as well.

Free Animated Minimal PowerPoint Template

This is a free PowerPoint template featuring a minimal and clean slide design. This template includes 22 unique slides featuring stylish animations. You can use it to create professional portfolios, business profiles, and more.

Visibility – Multipurpose PowerPoint Template

Featuring a beautiful and modern design, this PowerPoint template allows you to design creative presentations for various occasions. The template includes 50 fully animated slides that are available in both light and dark color themes. Each slide is easily customizable as well.

Company Presentation – PowerPoint Template

This animated PowerPoint template is perfect for creating presentations for business events and meetings. The template includes a total of 500 slides featuring 50 unique slides in 5 different color schemes. It also comes with master slide layouts, editable vector graphics, and more.

Ecology – Animated PowerPoint Template

Next in our list of the best animated PowerPoint templates is Ecology, a beautifully crafted presentation format consisting of 28 infographic slide designs, a range of color themes, and easy to edit vector elements.

Annual Plan Animated PowerPoint Template

Use this template to present your plan for the forthcoming year in the most impressive manner. It’s a versatile template that can be easily adjusted for other topics as well. With 35 stunning slides, 10 color modes, and 30 business concepts, it’s one of the best animated PowerPoint templates on our list.

Unigraph – Animated PowerPoint Template

Unigraph is a minimalistic business template that presents your content in the best way possible. It features an on-trend design, engaging and attention-grabbing slides ensuring you definitely nail your upcoming presentation.

Square – Animated PowerPoint Template

If you have got a presentation tomorrow, you need a visually engaging and professional template designed as quickly as possible. Consider Square, a gorgeously animated template containing everything you need to get an appreciation for your presentation.

Free Animated PowerPoint Template

Here we have a fantastic infographics template featuring 10 simple and elegant slides, free fonts, smooth animation, and fully customizable elements. It’s one of the best free animated PowerPoint templates out there!

Allegrasia – Animated Powerpoint Template

Allegrasia is a modern PowerPoint template that comes with an elegant design. This template includes 30 unique slides in 5 color schemes, making it a total of 300 slides. The template is perfect for creating slideshows for design and lifestyle presentations.

Babel – Minimal Animated Powerpoint Template

Babel is a unique PowerPoint template you can use to showcase your brand identity and style guide in a presentation. The template is fully animated and comes with 34 unique slides featuring beautifully minimal designs.

Selfone – Free Presentation Template

This is a completely free presentation template you can use to create app presentation slideshows. The template comes in multiple formats including PowerPoint, Keynote, and Google Slides as well.

Rivka – Minimal PowerPoint Template

Rivka is a stylish PowerPoint template that features a very visual slide design. There are lots of image placeholders where you can showcase your portfolios, product images, and more in a presentation. The template includes 63 unique slides.

Rundown – Modern Animated Powerpoint Template

A modern PowerPoint template with a simple design. This template is ideal for showcasing products and startups. The template comes with more than 50 unique slides with animations. And it includes editable vector graphics, image placeholders, and colors as well.

Viersa – Business Presentation Template

The perfect PowerPoint template for designing fashion and design presentations. This template includes an easily customizable design where you can change colors, fonts, and images to design a unique presentation of your own.

Hello – Animated Powerpoint Presentation

If you’re working on a presentation to showcase a product, service, or a business, this PowerPoint template will come in handy. It comes with a set of modern slides featuring a unique icon pack, free fonts, and simple animations.

Smash – Free Animated PowerPoint Template

Smash is a beautiful and modern PowerPoint template featuring a dark and elegant color theme. This template is free for you to download and use. It features more than 100 animated slides.

Blossom – Animated PowerPoint Template

Blossom is a modern PowerPoint presentation template that comes with a set of fully animated slides. It includes a total of 150 slides in 5 different premade color schemes with 30 unique slides in each template. This template is perfect for modern business and startup presentations.

Busono – Creative PowerPoint Template

Busono features a creative and minimal design that makes it the perfect choice for designing creative design and marketing related presentations. The template comes with 30 unique slides and you get to choose from 5 different color themes to match your branding.

Cityview – Visual PowerPoint Template

Cityview is a stylish PowerPoint template that features a modern slide design with plenty of space for showcasing images. The template includes 150 total slides and comes with creative slide animations as well.

Graphy – Creative PowerPoint Template

If you’re looking for a clean and minimal PowerPoint template to deliver a presentation driven by statistics and data, this template is perfect for you. It includes 30 unique slides in 5 color schemes featuring slide designs for visualizing data.

Brenna – Modern PowerPoint Template

Brenna is another creative and minimalist PowerPoint template that’s ideal for making presentations for creative agencies, startups, and shops. The template comes with a total of 150 slides featuring vector graphics, infographics, and more.

Voodoo – Free Animated PowerPoint Template

VooDoo is a clean and modern PowerPoint template you can use for free with your personal projects. The free version of the template includes 10 unique slides in light and dark color themes.

Tesla – Free PowerPoint Template

Tesla is a professional PowerPoint template you can use to create business and professional presentations. The template includes 10 free slides with editable designs.

Muetto – Modern PowerPoint Template

Muetto is a minimalist and fully animated PowerPoint presentation template featuring all kinds of slides, such as gallery slides and portfolio slides as well as lots of infographics, illustrations, icons, image placeholders, and much more to customize the design of the slides.

Admire – Design Portfolio PowerPoint Template

Admire is most suitable for making portfolio presentations for creative professionals and design agencies. The PowerPoint template includes a total of 150 slides featuring editable vector graphics and image placeholders.

Chiliad – Visual PowerPoint Template

Chiliad is a highly visual PowerPoint template that allows you to tell your story and message with slides filled lots of images. The template comes with 30 unique slides in 5 premade color schemes. All of the slides are fully animated as well.

Lookbook – Free Pastel Presentation Template

This free creative and colorful PowerPoint template is perfect for making attractive slideshows for design and fashion related presentations. It’s free to use with your personal projects.

Dark Red – Free PowerPoint Template

Dark Red is a professionally designed PowerPoint template featuring 30 unique slides. You can download the template for free and use it with your personal projects to create modern presentations.

Pagero – Stylish PowerPoint Template

Pagero PowerPoint template comes with a colorful and attractive design. It’s most suitable for making presentations for fashion design and beauty related product presentations. The template can also be customized to fit other types of presentations as well.

Libra – Business PowerPoint Template

Libra is a creative PowerPoint template you can use to make professional and modern slideshows for business and marketing related presentations. The template comes with a total of 150 slides featuring 5 different color themes.

Redaqua – Minimal PowerPoint Template

Redaqua features an attractive and minimalist slide design for making presentations for creative professional, startup, and agency related events. The template also includes lots of device mockups, infographics, image placeholders, and icon packs as well.

Portfolio – Free PowerPoint Presentation Template

If you’re looking for a simple PowerPoint template to showcase your portfolio, this free template will come in handy. It features 10 unique slides with easily editable layouts and drag and drop image placeholders.

Free Animated Medical PowerPoint Template

This free PowerPoint template comes with 30 unique slides designed for making medical themed presentations. All of the slides are fully animated to make your presentation look more attractive.

Digital Marketing Animated Powerpoint Template

This beautifully designed PowerPoint template comes with more than 40 unique slides filled with transition effects and object animations. The template is designed specifically for creating marketing and promotional presentations and it includes 2 pre-made themes.

Retrico – Vintage Slides PowerPoint Template

Retrico is an elegant PowerPoint template that features classic retro-themed slide designs. It includes more than 100 unique slides with animations. The presentation template is also available in 3 different color schemes.

ECO – Animated PowerPoint Template

This PowerPoint template is made for creating presentations for environmental and nature-themed slideshows. It features a very green and eco design and includes 80 unique slides. The template is available in both animated and non-animated versions as well.

Startup Pitch Deck PowerPoint Template

If you’re working on a presentation to pitch a startup or a product to investors, this PowerPoint template will come in handy. It comes with a total of 200 slides featuring transition animations and effects. A non-animated version is also included in this bundle.

SEO Agency – Animated PowerPoint Template

Promoting SEO services and convincing clients of its importance can be difficult at times, this animated PowerPoint template is crafted to ease up that process. This template includes 90 unique slides and it comes with 10 different color schemes.

Power – Dynamic Animated PowerPoint Template

Power is a beautiful PowerPoint template that features dynamic animations and transition effects. This premium-quality presentation template comes with 120 unique slides and in 20 different color themes. You can use it for your personal and commercial projects.

POP ART – Free Pastel PowerPoint Template

Pop Art is a free PowerPoint template that comes with a stylish slide design featuring attractive pastel colors. It’s ideal for showcasing products and portfolios.

Pastel  – Free Modern PowerPoint Template

Pastel is another colorful PowerPoint template featuring lots of attractive slides for showcasing fashion and apparel designs. The template can be used for various business, agency, and creative presentations.

Animated Business Infographics PowerPoint Template

This free PowerPoint template features a set of slides filled with unique and customizable infographics and charts. You can use these graphs and charts to effectively present your data to your audience.

SIMPLECO – Animated Powerpoint Template

Simpleco is a colorful PowerPoint template that includes 93 unique slides featuring lots of charts, graphs, infographics, and more. All of the slides in this template are animated and designed based on master slides. The template is available in 2 different color themes.

Clean Business Presentation Template

This clean and minimal PowerPoint template is perfect for presenting your business, product, or startup to clients and investors. It includes 50 unique slides and comes with lots of transition effects and animations.

Business Plan – Multipurpose PowerPoint Template

Make your business plan look more effective and engaging by using this animated PowerPoint template. This template comes with a design that can be used to craft many different types of business related presentations. It includes 100 unique slides in 20 different color themes.

Studio Minimal – PowerPoint Template

This PowerPoint presentation template comes with a minimalist and a clean design. It’s made specifically for creative professionals and agencies. The template includes 120 unique slides featuring stylish animations and more than 4000 line and vector icons.

Mongo – Animated Powerpoint Template

Mongo is a professional PowerPoint template made for businesses and corporate agencies. It includes a total of 300 slides in both light and dark color themes. The template is available in 3 different color versions and includes placeholders for easy editing.

Free Business Strategy Powerpoint Template

This free PowerPoint template comes with a set of minimalist slides featuring creative transition effects and animations. It’s perfect for presenting a simple business strategy during a meeting or to your target audience.

JD – Personal Powerpoint Presentation Template

Another free and animated PowerPoint template that comes with high-quality slides made specifically for promoting your skills and services. This template is ideal for freelancers, coaches, and instructors.

Responsive Solutions – Powerpoint Template

This creative PowerPoint presentation template comes with a total of 480 slides featuring 60 unique slides. The template is available in 5 different color schemes and in both light and dark color themes.

Somse – Animated Powerpoint Template

Somse is a PowerPoint presentation template that features a minimal design for creating both personal and business related presentations. It includes 108 multipurpose slides filled with custom object animations and effects.

Monthly Planner – PowerPoint Template

This is a unique PowerPoint presentation template that’s made specifically for creating slideshows for your monthly and annual business meetings. It includes 50 unique slides in 10 different premade color schemes. The slides also feature infographics, charts, and vector illustrations as well.

Quadro – Corporate Powerpoint Template

Quadro is an elegant PowerPoint presentation template that comes with 80 unique slides and its available in 4 different color schemes. The template is easily customizable and includes lots of editable device mockups, graphs, and graphics.

Beres – Animated Powerpoint Template

This PowerPoint presentation template includes more than 100 unique slides and you also get to choose from 8 different color schemes to create a professional slideshow. The template is available in both animated and non-animated versions as well.

Magnum – Animated PowerPoint Template

Magnum is a colorful PowerPoint presentation template that includes more than 970 slides filled with images, graphics, icons, and illustrations. It’s ideal for creating a slideshow for a creative presentations or a business meeting. The template is also available in light and dark color themes.

Vega – Animated PowerPoint Template Free

Vega is a colorful and a creative PowerPoint template that you can use free of charge. It comes with 80 unique slides featuring animations and creative vector graphics. You can easily customize it to your preference as well.

Procyon – Animated Presentation Slideshow

This free PowerPoint template includes 45 slides featuring transition effects as well as lots of graphs, infographics, charts, and more. You can use it to create a basic presentation slideshow for free.

5 Tips for Creating Animations & Transitions in PowerPoint

Adding animation to your PowerPoint slideshows can greatly enhance the experience you offer through your presentation. If you’re new to PowerPoint, follow these tips to get started with animations.

1. Transition vs Object Animations

One of the first things you need to be aware of when using PowerPoint animations is the difference between transition animations and object animations.

On PowerPoint, you can animate each object you add to your slides. While this can be useful when presenting key points in a presentation, you should try to keep object animations to a minimum.

You can also add transition animations to your slides. These animations help create smoother transitions between slides.

2. Time It Perfectly

Each and every animation you add in PowerPoint can be customized to your preference by setting times for the duration of the animation as well as adding delays.

It’s up to you to experiment with different settings to find the right time and delays for your animations. Try to keep animations short and sweet.

3. Stack Multiple Animations

Another useful feature of PowerPoint animations is the ability to stack multiple animations for objects. For example, you can add both entrance and exit animations for each object on your slide by stacking different animation effects.

Stacking animations can drastically increase the duration of your slideshow presentations so use this feature only when necessary.

4. Automatic vs Controlled Animations

Controlled animations offer a great advantage when you’re delivering specific types of presentations like product reveals and feature showcases. For example, if you want to talk about key points in your speech, you can use controlled animations to reveal those points one at a time upon your mouse click or using a remote.

You can also set your animations to play automatically so they flow through your slide presentations without having to click for each slide to start.

5. Keep It Simple

Overall, you should try to keep animations to a minimum and avoid using the more flashy animations in your presentations. For example, it’s perfectly fine to add a fade-in transition effect to your slides. However, adding flashing and bouncing animations may hurt your reputation as a professional.

Stick to the simple and minimal animations to make your presentations more entertaining and easier to look at.

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Make interactive presentations

Create show-stopping presentations and clickable slide decks with Genially’s free online presentation builder. Leave boring behind and tell a story that’s interactive, animated, and beautifully engaging.

INTERACTIVE CONTENT

A presentation that works like a website

Engage your audience with interactive slides that they can click on and explore. Add music, video, hotspots, popup windows, quiz games and interactive data visualizations in a couple of clicks. No coding required!

NO-CODE ANIMATION

Make your slides pop with animation

Bring a touch of movie magic to the screen with incredible visual effects and animated page transitions. Add click-trigger and timed animations to make any topic easy to understand and captivating to watch.

INTEGRATIONS

Live from the world wide web

Embed online content directly in your slides for a media-rich interactive experience. From YouTube and Spotify to Google Maps and Sheets, Genially works seamlessly with over 100 popular apps and websites.

TEMPLATES & TOOLKIT

Genius design tools

With Genially, anyone can create a polished and professional presentation. Choose from over 2000 pre-built templates, or create your own design using the drag-and-drop resources, color palettes, icons, maps and vector graphics.

ONLINE PLATFORM

Safe and sound in the cloud

Because Genially is online, you can relax knowing that your slides are always up-to-date. There’s no risk of forgetting to save changes or accessing the wrong file. Log in from anywhere, collaborate with your team, and make edits in real time.

All-in-one interactive presentation maker

Real-time collaboration

Co-edit slide decks with others in real time and organize all of your team projects in shared spaces.

Multi format

Present live, share the link, or download as an interactive PDF, MP4 video, JPG, HTML, or SCORM package.

Engagement Analytics

See how many people have viewed and clicked on your slides and keep tabs on learner progress with User Tracking.

Import from PPTX

Give your old decks a new lease of life by importing PowerPoint slides and transforming them with a little Genially magic.

Keep content on-brand with your logo, fonts, colors, brand assets, and team templates at your fingertips.

Quiz & Survey Builder

Use the Interactive Questions feature to add a fun quiz to your slides or gather feedback from your audience.

Beautiful templates

Make your next deck in a flash with Genially’s ready-to-use slides.

OKR Presentation

School Notebook Presentation

Animated Sketch Presentation

Minimal presentation

Land Of Magic Presentation

Onboarding presentation

Visual Presentation

Animated chalkboard presentation

Online Education Guide

Terrazzo presentation

Startup pitch

Historical presentation

THEMES FOR EVERYONE

Interactive presentation ideas

From classroom materials to business pitches, make an impact every day with Genially.

Education presentations

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Business presentations

Thesis defense

What our community says about us

Share anywhere

Present live

From the front of the room or behind a screen, you’ll wow your audience with Genially. Heading off grid? Download in HTML to present dynamic slides without WiFi.

Share the link

Every Genially slide deck has its own unique url, just like a website! Share the link so that others can explore at their own pace, or download an MP4 video slideshow or PDF.

Post online

Embed the slides on your website or post them on social media. Upload to Microsoft Teams, Google Classroom, Moodle or any other platform.

The benefits of interactive slides

🗣️ Active participation An interactive slide deck gives your audience cool things to click on and discover, boosting learning and engagement.

👂 Multi-sensory experience Audio, video, animations, and mouse interactions make your content immersive, entertaining and accessible.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 People-friendly format Pop-ups and embeds condense more material into fewer slides so you can break information down into digestible chunks.


🎮 Gamification Games, quizzes and puzzles make information more memorable and enable you to gather feedback and check understanding.

How to make an interactive presentation

With Genially’s easy-to-use presentation platform, anyone can make incredible visual content in moments.

Choose a template or a blank canvas

Get stunning results in less time with a ready-made template. Feeling creative? Design your own slides from scratch.

Customize the design

Add animations and interactions

Resources to become a pro presentation creator

VIDEO TUTORIAL

How to create an interactive presentation: Get started in Genially.

EXPERT TIPS

How to present data without sending your audience to sleep.

MICRO COURSE

No-code animation: Bring your slides to life with cinematic visual effects.

PRESENTATION IDEAS

The art of digital storytelling: Engage and thrill on screen.

Genially in a nutshell

How do I make a presentation interactive and how does Genially work? Find the answers to all of your slide-related questions here!

What’s an interactive presentation?

Interactive slides contain clickable hotspots, links, buttons, and animations that are activated at the touch of a button. Instead of reading or watching passively, your audience can actively interact with the content.  

Genially’s interaction presentation software allows you to combine text, photos, video clips, audio and other content in one deck. It’s a great way to condense more information into fewer slides. 

If you’re a teacher, you can share multiple materials in one single learning resource. Students can create their own projects using digital media and online maps. For business or training, try embedding spreadsheet data, PDFs, and online content directly in your slides. 

An interactive slide deck is more user-friendly than a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation or Google Slides document. That’s because you can break information down into chunks with pop-ups, labels, voiceovers and annotated infographics.  

The other benefit of interactive content is increased engagement. It’s easier to keep your audience’s attention when they’re actively participating. Try Genially’s presentation software and free slideshow maker to see how it’s better than other presentation websites. You won’t go back to standard presentation apps!

How do you make a clickable slide?

The best way to make slides clickable is to use Genially’s free interactive presentation program. Design your slide then apply an interaction. In a couple of clicks, you can add popup windows, hyperlinks, close-up images, games, animations, multimedia and other content. 

Choose from the library of hotspot buttons and icons to show people what to click on. Go to Presenter View to get a preview and see how your content will appear to your audience.

How do I create presentations that look professional?

You’ve got a deadline looming and you’re staring at the screen with a blank presentation. We’ve all been there! Starting a presentation design from scratch is tricky, especially if you’re short on time. 

Genially’s free online presentation maker has over 2000 ready-to-use templates for professional slide presentations, photos slideshows, and more. Each slide design has been created by our team of top graphic designers. No need to worry about fonts, centering images, or designing a matching color scheme. It’s all done for you. 

Start by browsing our layouts and themes for education, business and then customize with your own text and images.

How do I share or download my slides?

Because Genially is a cloud based presentation software, you can simply share the link to your slides. Like other online presentation tools, there are no files to download or store on your computer. Everything is saved online.  

When you publish your slide deck, it gets its own unique url, just like a website. Share the link with others to let them explore the content in their own time. If you’re presenting live, just click the Present button. 

You can also embed your presentation on your website, company wiki, or social media. Genially is compatible with WordPress, Moodle, Google Classroom, and other platforms. If you use an LMS, you can also download your interactive design slides in SCORM format.

For slideshow videos and slideshows with music, share online or download as an MP4 video. Check out our free slideshow templates for ideas.

Can I make a free presentation in Genially?

You bet! Genially is an easy-to-use slide maker, with a free version and paid plans. The free plan allows you to create unlimited slides with interactions and animations. Subscribe to one of our paid plans for more advanced features.

Discover a world of interactive content

Join the 25 million people designing incredible interactive experiences with Genially.

How-To Geek

6 ways to create more interactive powerpoint presentations.

Engage your audience with cool, actionable features.

Quick Links

• Add a QR code
• Embed Microsoft Forms (Education or Business Only)
• Embed a Live Web Page
• Add Links and Menus
• Add Clickable Images to Give More Info
• Add a Countdown Timer

We've all been to a presentation where the speaker bores you to death with a mundane PowerPoint presentation. Actually, the speaker could have kept you much more engaged by adding some interactive features to their slideshow. Let's look into some of these options.

1. Add a QR code

Adding a QR code can be particularly useful if you want to direct your audience to an online form, website, or video.

Some websites have in-built ways to create a QR code. For example, on Microsoft Forms , when you click "Collect Responses," you'll see the QR code option via the icon highlighted in the screenshot below. You can either right-click the QR code to copy and paste it into your presentation, or click "Download" to add it to your device gallery to insert the QR code as a picture.

In fact, you can easily add a QR code to take your viewer to any website. On Microsoft Edge, right-click anywhere on a web page where there isn't already a link, and left-click "Create QR Code For This Page."

You can also create QR codes in other browsers, such as Chrome.

You can then copy or download the QR code to use wherever you like in your presentation.

2. Embed Microsoft Forms (Education or Business Only)

If you plan to send your PPT presentation to others—for example, if you're a trainer sending step-by-step instruction presentation, a teacher sending an independent learning task to your students, or a campaigner for your local councilor sending a persuasive PPT to constituents—you might want to embed a quiz, questionnaire, pole, or feedback survey in your presentation.

In PowerPoint, open the "Insert" tab on the ribbon, and in the Forms group, click "Forms". If you cannot see this option, you can add new buttons to the ribbon .

As at April 2024, this feature is only available for those using their work or school account. We're using a Microsoft 365 Personal account in the screenshot below, which is why the Forms icon is grayed out.

Then, a sidebar will appear on the right-hand side of your screen, where you can either choose a form you have already created or opt to craft a new form.

Now, you can share your PPT presentation with others , who can click the fields and submit their responses when they view the presentation.

3. Embed a Live Web Page

You could always screenshot a web page and paste that into your PPT, but that's not a very interactive addition to your presentation. Instead, you can embed a live web page into your PPT so that people with access to your presentation can interact actively with its contents.

To do this, we will need to add an add-in to our PPT account .

Add-ins are not always reliable or secure. Before installing an add-in to your Microsoft account, check that the author is a reputable company, and type the add-in's name into a search engine to read reviews and other users' experiences.

To embed a web page, add the Web Viewer add-in ( this is an add-in created by Microsoft ).

Go to the relevant slide and open the Web Viewer add-in. Then, copy and paste the secure URL into the field box, and remove https:// from the start of the address. In our example, we will add a selector wheel to our slide. Click "Preview" to see a sample of the web page's appearance in your presentation.

This is how ours will look.

When you or someone with access to your presentation views the slideshow, this web page will be live and interactive.

4. Add Links and Menus

As well as moving from one slide to the next through a keyboard action or mouse click, you can create links within your presentation to direct the audience to specific locations.

To create a link, right-click the outline of the clickable object, and click "Link."

In the Insert Hyperlink dialog box, click "Place In This Document," choose the landing destination, and click "OK."

What's more, to make it clear that an object is clickable, you can use action buttons. Open the "Insert" tab on the ribbon, click "Shape," and then choose an appropriate action button. Usefully, PPT will automatically prompt you to add a link to these shapes.

You might also want a menu that displays on every slide. Once you have created the menu, add the links using the method outlined above. Then, select all the items, press Ctrl+C (copy), and then use Ctrl+V to paste them in your other slides.

5. Add Clickable Images to Give More Info

Through PowerPoint's animations, you can give your viewer the power to choose what they see and when they see it. This works nicely whether you're planning to send your presentation to others to run through independently or whether you're presenting in front of a group and want your audience to decide which action they want to take.

Start by creating the objects that will be clickable (trigger) and the items that will appear (pop-up).

Then, select all the pop-ups together. When you click "Animations" on the ribbon and choose an appropriate animation for the effect you want to achieve, this will be applied to all objects you have selected.

The next step is to rename the triggers in your presentation. To do this, open the "Home" tab, and in the Editing group, click "Select", and then "Selection Pane."

With the Selection Pane open, select each trigger on your slide individually, and rename them in the Selection Pane, so that they can be easily linked to in the next step.

Finally, go back to the first pop-up. Open the "Animations" tab, and in the Advanced Animation group, click the "Trigger" drop-down arrow. Then, you can set the item to appear when a trigger is clicked in your presentation.

If you want your item to disappear when the trigger is clicked again, select the pop-up, click "Add Animation" in the Advanced Animation group, choose an Exit animation, and follow the same step to link that animation to the trigger button.

6. Add a Countdown Timer

A great way to get your audience to engage with your PPT presentation is to keep them on edge by adding a countdown timer. Whether you're leading a presentation and want to let your audience stop to discuss a topic, or running an online quiz with time-limit questions, having a countdown timer means your audience will keep their eye on your slide throughout.

To do this, you need to animate text boxes or shapes containing your countdown numbers. Choose and format a shape and type the highest number that your countdown clock will need. In our case, we're creating a 10-second timer.

Now, with your shape selected, open the "Animations" tab on the ribbon and click the animation drop-down arrow. Then, in the Exit menu, click "Disappear."

Open the Animation Pane, and click the drop-down arrow next to the animation you've just added. From there, choose "Timing."

Make sure "On Click" is selected in the Start menu, and change the Delay option to "1 second," before clicking "OK."

Then, with this shape still selected, press Ctrl+C (copy), and then Ctrl+V (paste). In the second box, type 9 . With the Animation Pane still open and this second shape selected, click the drop-down arrow and choose "Timing" again. Change the Start option to "After Previous," and make sure the Delay option is 1 second. Then, click "OK."

We can now use this second shape as our template, as when we copy and paste it again, the animations will also duplicate. With this second shape selected, press Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, type 8 into the box, and continue to do the same until you get to 0 .

Next, remove the animations from the "0" box, as you don't want this to disappear. To do this, click the shape, and in the Animation Pane drop-down, click "Remove."

You now need to layer them in order. Right-click the box containing number 1, and click "Bring To Front." You will now see that box on the top. Do the same with the other numbers in ascending order.

Finally, you need to align the objects together. Click anywhere on your slide and press Ctrl+A. Then, in the Home tab on the ribbon, click "Arrange." First click "Align Center," and then bring the menu up again, so that you can click "Align Middle."

Press Ctrl+A again to select your timer, and you can then move your timer or copy and paste it elsewhere.

Press F5 to see the presentation in action, and when you get to the slide containing the timer, click anywhere on the slide to see your countdown timer in action!

Now that your PPT presentation is more interactive, make sure you've avoided these eight common presentational mistakes before you present your slides.