How To Do Animations in Powerpoint Easily

I am sure you already know what Microsoft PowerPoint is. It is a desktop application that allows users to create different types of presentations. It’s a great presentation tool that helps us to convey our ideas in an engaging and dynamic way.

But sadly most of the time, slides created in Powerpoint have boring and uninteresting style of presentation because most creators don’t know how to use Microsoft Powerpoint to its full potential.

Let us ask you a question.

What if we could do animations in Powerpoint?

Animations in Powerpoint presentations add the element of fun and keep the audience’s attention. There is something mesmerizing when you see graphics and text moving on the screen.

If used correctly, animations can be a powerful tool that will help you drive home your key points and make your presentations memorable.

There are a lot of people out there who are looking for the very first time to create animations in PowerPoint. But when they start using PowerPoint, they get disappointed because the application doesn’t come with an in-built feature to create animations.

There are many ways to add animation in Powerpoint, there are different modes to create the animation but what I am giving you here is a simple technique to do animations in Powerpoint.

Let’s get started and learn how to create animations from inside Microsoft Powerpoint.

But before that, I want to tell you about an animation software which we now use to create stunning 2d and 3d animation videos for our marketing campaigns, without having any graphic design skills. It is an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop style animation video-maker. Instead of using Powerpoint, we use this software now to create videos.

How to Create Animations in Powerpoint Step By Step

Now let’s see how to create an animation video in Microsoft Powerpoint.

Build Up Your Scene

The very first thing we should do is to start with a good scene. Creating the perfect scene starts with high-quality images.

To build up a scene we’re going to need an attractive background image and some characters and maybe some prop images depending on our video requirements. When creating animations in Powerpoint, it is always better to choose images with transparent backgrounds.

The transparent background images we use for our projects are mostly PNG images, Vector images, or SVG images. When searching for images if you want cartoon-style images, just search for whatever you’re looking for and then add the word ‘illustration’ at the end of it. This should give you cartoon-style images.

Now there are many places online, from where you can get these transparent background images. I personally use my Canva Pro account to get the images I need.

You can use a premium stock image website or a free image repository site to get these images. You can search on websites like FreePik, PixaBay, or Pexels. All of these websites are free to use.

There is also an option to get images from inside the Microsoft Powerpoint interface. To get images from inside your Powerpoint dashboard, click on the ‘Insert’ tab and then choose ‘Pictures’ as shown in the image above.

From there you can either upload an image from your desktop or search for online pictures. We can also insert 3D models, SmartArt, and charts inside our presentation.

Import Pictures into the Slide

This is a very straightforward process. To import images into your Powerpoint slide, just click on the ‘Insert’ tab as mentioned above, and choose the files you want to include in the animation. I have already imported all the images and arranged them on the slide.

At first, I added the background image. We can either directly insert the image into the slide or can format the slide background and then add the background image. Here is how to format the slide background.

Once we have added the background, it is time to add individual characters and props. We can simply add these assets into the slides by inserting them as pictures.

Adding Animations

Now to the FUN part! It is time to animate our scene using Powerpoint. To do animations in Powerpoint we can use the ‘animations tab’ on the top of the ribbon.

We need to choose a character that we want to animate and then click on ‘add animation’. As you can see in the picture above there are different kinds of animations we can add to a character.

We can add entrance animations, exit animations, or emphasis animations. There is also the motion path animation which is by far our favorite.

Let’s see how to do animations in Powerpoint with an example. For this example, I want to make a vehicle move from one side of the slide to the other. To do that, I will first import the image inside Powerpoint and add it to the slide.

To perform this action let’s choose an animation. Let’s click on ‘Add Animations’ and choose the ‘Motion Paths’.

Now, this animation takes the object from point A to point B. This means that the object moves on a straight-line path in a specific direction. Once we add the animation all we need to do is adjust the direction. Watch the video below to find out how it is done.

As you just saw, it is pretty easy to add animation in Powerpoint. When I added the motion path animation, it was very fast. So I had to change the timing and adjust the animation duration. We can adjust the animation by accessing the ‘Animation Pane’.

When we click on the ‘Animation Pane’ tab on the top, a small window pops up on the right giving us all the customization options. If you have more than one animated element on the slide, all of these animations will be shown in the ‘Animation Pane’.

We can also make the animations appear at a time, or one after another. There is also an option to trigger a particular animation with the click of the mouse.

Similarly, you can play with all the available animation options and accordingly animate the other characters. And that is how to create animation in Powerpoint.

Adding Voiceovers to the Powerpoint Slide

To add voiceovers to the slide, click on the ‘Insert’ tab and choose the ‘Audio’ option. From there, we can either upload a pre-recorded voiceover file or can record voiceover directly from inside the Microsoft Powerpoint interface.

Other Animation Options

Transitions

There are few other animations we can add to our project. One is the ‘Transition’ effects. Transition effects are the animations that happen when we move from one slide to another. Microsoft Powerpoint has some cool transition effects which can be added to our presentations to make them more engaging.

3D Models

3D models can be added to our presentation from inside the Powerpoint interface to make our presentations more impressive. There is a large collection of 3D animated characters for us to choose from. We can choose characters, avatars, animals, emojis, gadgets, and more to be added to our presentation.

How to Export The Animated Video in Powerpoint?

Once you have created all the slides and added all the animations it is time to export the presentation. I want to export my file as a video. To do that I need to click on the ‘File’ tab and then go to the ‘Export’ section.

Now I just need to click on the ‘create a video’ option. I can then export the video in Standard, HD, Full HD, or in 4K resolution. And that’s how to export the animated presentation as a video in Powerpoint.

How To Do Animations in Powerpoint Easily – Beginner’s Guide