Entrance Animations in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

Among several types of animations that PowerPoint 2016 provides, Entrance effects are probably the most popular. By applying Entrance animation effects, you can make your slide objects appear on the slide almost magically! You make them appear in a fraction of a second—or get them to fly in from any direction. You can also do a Zoom in, or even better, just make it subtle with a simple Fade effect. Whichever Entrance animation effect you choose, make sure to go for something that is in sync with the subject of your presentation. Most of the time, Appear, Fade, or Wipe animation effects work the best.

When you summon the Add Animation drop-down gallery for applying animation to your selected slide object, you will see Entrance animation effects, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 1, below.

Figure 1: Entrance Effects

If you want to explore more Entrance Effect animations, select the More Entrance Effects option within the Add Animation drop-down gallery, as shown highlighted in blue within Figure 1, above. Doing so opens the Add Entrance Effect dialog box, as shown in Figure 2, below. Since there are more effects available than what we can show in the screenshot shown towards the left in Figure 2, we scrolled down the dialog box to see more effects and created another screenshot shown towards the right in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Add Entrance Effect dialog box

Within the Add Entrance Effect dialog box, you'll see that Entrance Effects are divided into four categories:

1. Basic
2. Subtle
3. Moderate
4. Exciting

If you can't see Exciting which is the last category, just scroll down, as shown within the dialog box shown towards the right within Figure 2, above.

Broadly speaking, these category names explain how much attention-seeking each of these available effects are:

1. Effects in the Basic category are simple, everyday effects that you may have seen a zillion times.
1. Subtle effects do not attract too much attention,
2. Moderate effects do ask for some attention, and
3. Effects in the Exciting category scream for your audience's attention.

As far as possible, you should use something simple such as an Appear, a Fade, or a Wipe effect. These are all from either the Basic or Subtle categories.

Animations within the Add Entrance Effect dialog box entirely depend upon the slide object you have selected. Figure 2, above, shows the Add Entrance Effect dialog box when a shape is selected. Here, we selected a Rectangle for applying animation. Compare the Exciting effects within the Add Entrance Effect dialog towards right in Figure 2 above, with the one in Figure 3, below where we summoned the same dialog box for applying animation to a text box.

Figure 3: Add Entrance Effect dialog box summoned with a text box selected

The Exciting category, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 3, above contains three extra Entrance Effects: Drop, Flip, and Whip effects which were grayed out in the Add Entrance Effect dialog box, as shown highlighted in red towards right within Figure 2, previously on this page. These three Entrance Effects work only with text, not with shapes.

The embedded sample presentation below shows all the Entrance animation effects available in PowerPoint 2016.