Hi Lou,

well Charles should be here soon and will probably tick me off for replying on this one, but anyway...here goes.

I always find the first thing to bear in mind when it comes to making animations in PowerPoint is to understand the 3 different methods of starting an animation in PowerPoint.

It may sound really obvious, but I'm amazed at the number of slides and presentations I see where everything is suddenly stopped, or things seem to come on and animate or trigger at irregular moments because the author and creator of the slide show really doesn't understand the difference between the 3 different animation triggers.

You've no doubt seen the 3 options available in the drop down list for Start under the timing tab in the Custom Path dialog box.

1. On Click
2. With Previous
3. After Previous

• On Click starts the animation sequence when you click your mouse pointer any where on the slide.
• With Previous starts the animation sequence as close to the same time as the previous animation set up to play on the slide.
• After Previous starts the animation sequence after the previous animation sequence has finished.

Seems pretty straight forward right?

But that seems to be where the majority of presenters creating their animations make a mistake. Because in addition to starting animations, each of the 3 start options can be set up to have a built in delay in seconds, defined by the author. It seems that more often than not these delays are either non existent, poorly timed, or misunderstood.

To set up the delay for an animation, right mouse-click the animation, select the Timing tab, and then enter the number of seconds delay you think your animation should have before it begins.

The default value for the delay is 0. But I have seen delays entered for several minutes especially for self-running presentations and slide shows at trade fairs and conferences where the presentation is just looping continuously and animations are used to add a little "sparkle" every so often.

You can easily imagine that this delay value is where the differences between the animations really becomes obvious and sets each apart, and could easily be the difference between a successful animation and a poorly timed piece.


On Click
In my experience, On Click with delay, allows you to best control the start time when you use the delay option.

Since the person running the presentation has to do something (either press a keyboard key or click the mouse pointer on the slide to start the sequence), you know the clock start time exactly.

So we see the following really in effect

• Click.
• The clock starts.
• X number of seconds later, the sequence starts.

With Previous
This one is often the most confusing, but I have found it has greatest use when you want to run several animations on a slide at one time and have control over their running.

But is is also a little tricky to control because the delay starts when the previous animation starts, you can easily cause unexpected animation results. So timing, as with all animation really is critical!

For example, imagine a situation where you have a Circle AutoShape and have two motion path animations applied to it. The first animation should move the object diagonally across the slide. The second animation should move the object from a different spot to back to the start position.

As with all animation, the key to achieving the effect is in timing. So if you set the first animation to start on click and to run at a medium speed for example, and then set the second to Start with previous, you would need to add a little delay in order to let the shape "rest" in between movement rather than just "ping pong"  (which is most unrealistic animation movement).

So for example a time delay for the second animation of 2 seconds would be added. And this is where the problem seems to set in.

The fact is that PowerPoint cannot guarantee to run your presentation at a specific speed, and this is most sepcially so across different platform and across different computers, graphics cards, processor power, harddrive, and memory types.

So setting the animation timing up right on one computer will most likely not give the desired effect on another.

For example, you might find that in the case of our Circle the object has moved only partially along the path before the second animation begins and so suddenly jumps to the end position of the first path so that it can begin the second animation.

It wouldn't be very convincing would it?

So this animation start type would not be recommended for this example, although of course, this type of effect could create a really great animation. For example, if our circle was smaller, and we had several of them on screen at once this could easily give the effect of snow, or rain.

Who would have thought it would be possible to make your slide look like it was snowing?


After Previous
After Previous starts an animation after the previous animation has finished running. So in this instance, the clock for the delay does not begin until after the previous animation has finished. This method is good for setting up sequential animations that you want to start and play by themselves. For example in a self-running presentation. And adds only a delay to the start of the animation without transition, movement, or change in between the two animations.

So Lou, there you have my first advice for creating animations in PowerPoint. Understanding the timing options that PowerPoint provides for starting and playing them.


Repeating Animations in PowerPoint
Along with the ability to decide how and when to start the animations, the timing options allow you to decide if you want the animation to repeat.

Animations can be set to repeat a fixed number of times, until the next mouse-click or key-press, or until the end of the slide.

When using Repeat with the 3 various animation start options, again, it's important to consider their affect on the animation.

After Previous works fine, (unless you set one of the animations to loop). Once an animation starts, it isn’t done until it is done repeating. So your second animation would never begin!

That is because each animation is repeated as many times as you instruct PowerPoint to play it.

If you have multiple animations on a slide that are set to repeat one after the other, and several are set to loop then your animation sequence will never complete.

So beware that if you set an animation to repeat until the end of the slide, then the execution of the next animation will not begin.

Another thing to remember is that several of the Entrance animations do not repeat. Even though Microsoft say they do, and you can adjust their settings, they simply do not repeat. I don't know why this is, and since Microsoft have allowed settings on them to repeat, we have to just assume that this is one of the bugs of PowerPoint.

Motion Paths often seems able to repeat between 2 and 4 times which may seems strange which can produce some very interesting effects but usually....not what you expect.

So as a finally tip Lou, my advice would be to experiment with your animation settings. Make sure the effects you want to create are possible with the start settings and repeat/ loop options that you are using and remember always to test your animation if possible on another machine if your presentation is for distribution, or will be shown at a conference on a common PC or laptop.