Adding Animation in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac

We have already explored what animation is, and what guidelines should to be considered before you add an animation to a slide object within PowerPoint. You can animate any slide object that is selected on your slide. These slide objects include pictures, shapes, text, bulleted lists, SmartArt graphics, charts, etc. Once the slide object is animated, you can tweak the animation to control how the slide object appears, moves, and disappears in Slide Show view.

Follow these steps to animate a shape in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac:

1. Create a new presentation and insert a shape and select it. Alternatively, open any existing presentation and select an unanimated slide object. We selected a star shape, as shown in Figure 1, below. With the shape selected, click the Animations tab of the Ribbon, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 1.
2. 
   Figure 1: Animations tab of the Ribbon
2. Within the Animations tab, locate the Entrance Effects group and hover your cursor over the preview thumbnails to reveal a down-arrow (More) button, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 2, below.
3. 
   Figure 2: More button within the Entrance Effects group
3. Click this More button to open the Entrance Effects drop-down gallery, as shown in Figure 3, below. Within the Entrance Effects drop-down gallery, you will see various Entrance Effect animation preview thumbnails, grouped into four different categories named Basic, Subtle, Moderate, and Exciting. Click on any one thumbnail to apply the associated animation to your selected slide object. In Figure 3, below, you can see that we selected the Zoom entrance animation within the Moderate category.
4. 
   Figure 3: Entrance Effects drop-down gallery
4. As soon as the selected animation effect has been applied to the slide object, you will notice a digit. As you can see, the digit 1 is highlighted in red within Figure 4, below, along with the selected slide object, indicating that an animation has been applied to it. In Figure 4, since you see only 1 without any 2, 3, etc., you can assume that this slide requires you to click just once while in Slide Show mode to see all animations on the slide. By default, all animations applied are set to play on click.
5. 
   Figure 4: Animation applied to the slide object
5. Once you are done with applying an animation, you can preview it by clicking the Play button within the Preview group of Animations tab that you can see in Figure 5, below. You can also play the slide in Slide Show view to preview the animation.
6. 
   Figure 5: Play button used to preview the animation
6. You can add animation effects other than Entrance in the same way. Choose the relevant animation effects for Emphasis, Exit, and Motion Path animations.

Now that you have added an animation to a slide object, you can control more animation properties like event and speed.