Office 2008 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual

Adding Movement

After you’ve created all your slides and put them in the proper order, the content part of your creation is done. Now it’s time to add slide transitions to supply sophisticated smoothness—or gee-whiz glitz—as you move from slide to slide. You can also add object builds—animations within a slide. Besides adding some visual excitement to your slideshow, transitions and builds can help you present your information more clearly, add drama, signal changes in topic, and—if you use them wisely—give your slideshow a much more professional, polished appearance.

Transitions

If you don’t add a transition, PowerPoint changes slides instantly—or cuts—from one slide to another. Besides the simple cut, PowerPoint has 64 other slide transition styles to choose from. They range from simple dissolves (where one slide melts into the next) and wipes (where one slide moves across the screen to replace the other) to striking pinwheels, checkerboards, and twirling 3-D cubes. You owe it to yourself to sample all the transitions once just so you know what’s available. Even with all this variety, though, it’s a good idea to rely on simple transitions and use the pyrotechnics sparingly. You don’t want your audience to walk away impressed by your fancy transitions—and unable to remember your message.

Transitions serve two very different purposes in a slideshow: They can either create smooth segues from one slide to another, or they can provide a dramatic punctuation to highlight the break between ...