Transitions

Quick reference

• 00:04 This video covers transitions in PowerPoint. Transitions are such an important way of moving from one slide to the next in either a subtle or an
• 00:11 exciting fashion. In this video we’re going to cover the types of transitions, the timing, the fact that they work forwards and backwards, a
• 00:18 little bit about the logic of using transitions, and then finally dynamic transitions. So let’s hit the ESC key on the keyboard and get out of reading
• 00:26 view, which has been running this presentation constrained within a window. And here is our presentation. Notice that I’ve got some sections
• 00:34 which group my slides into various concepts, and sections are the subject of another video, and so I’ve titled this section about subtle
• 00:42 transitions, and exciting and so on. So let’s have a look at the transitions tab on the ribbon. The first thing we notice is the transitions to this
• 00:51 slide group, as well as effect options and some timing options. I drop the little arrow down, known as a more button because it shows more
• 01:00 options, and it shows the groups of transitions being subtle, exciting and dynamic. So I choose a subtle transition of fade and we get a preview
• 01:10 of how that will appear. For this slide I select reveal, and a bit of a preview again, and now let’s go into reading view and click through those
• 01:20 slides and see how those transitions work. And so subtle transitions are very good when you’ve got a particular area of your presentation and
• 01:27 you want to encourage the flow between slides not to interrupt the concentration of your audience. However, when you move from a
• 01:35 particular area of the presentation into a whole new concept, or perhaps even another speaker, it’s okay to have an exciting transition. Or
• 01:43 perhaps your presentation is stand-alone and you want to make your presentation a bit more engaging, and stand-alone presentations are the
• 01:50 subject of other videos. So we select the slide that we wish to add the transition to, drop the little more button down again, and we have
• 01:58 transitions such as cube, we get a preview, or flip or shred; and these transitions again are just a way of breaking up a presentation into more
• 02:08 defined blocks of information within the storyline of the presentation. Notice the effect options button, the context of which changes depending
• 02:16 on which transition on the slide you have selected. These options really are a variation of the transition applied such as quite often the
• 02:23 direction. So if we select slide 7, remember that a transition governs the effect that will occur moving towards the slide that you place a
• 02:31 transition on. I will add a switch transition and go into reading view from the previous slide; so we go forward to that slide and in a slideshow
• 02:40 mode I may be speaking about that particular slide. Say for example I bump the keyboard and I go forwards a little bit too quickly, I can use the
• 02:49 BACKSPACE key on the keyboard and the slide transition works in reverse. It’s a very useful addition to transitions in PowerPoint. It
• 02:58 doesn’t break the continuity of your talk, particularly when you’re presenting live. Notice also that you can change the duration of the
• 03:05 transition so we can actually select more than one slide holding the CTRL key by selecting those thumbnails and change the timing of the
• 03:13 transitions to all of those slides as well of course to one if it was selected. Now I bump that up to 2 seconds and of course that works
• 03:20 forwards and in reverse as well. But before we move on to look at the logic of adding transitions, let’s have a look at the apply to all
• 03:28 button. When you apply a transition to a slide, the apply to all button applies that transition, that is the effects and the timing of the transition
• 03:38 to all slides in the presentation. That’s a real time saver but it’s also useful because it is good to try and restrain yourself to using a single
• 03:47 style of transition throughout your presentation. And this will allow you to apply a particular one that you’ve got. Let’s look at the logic of adding
• 03:55 transitions to presentations slides. Now I’ve got some chevrons on this slide numbered 1, 2, 3, and then on the following slide numbered 4, 5,
• 04:03 and 6 and so on. So to get good continuity between these 2 slides the logical transition to add is a push transition, from right. And again
• 04:12 we apply the same transition of push, from right to the next slide as well. Now we preview the transition of those 3 slides and the slides enter
• 04:21 in a logical fashion and that gives continuity to our presentation. So I speak about items 1 to 3, click which brings in items 4 to 6, click and then
• 04:33 items 7 to 9. So always think about the logic of transitions that you apply to your slides in a presentation. Dynamic transitions; some people
• 04:41 struggle to understand dynamic transitions but they’re actually very easy; just imagine that the transitions happen to everything on the slide
• 04:50 apart from the background. A dynamic transition is really a dual transition; the first part of the transition, a fade transition, is applied to the
• 04:59 slide background. Now if the slide background on both slides is identical, the slide will change but no one will be aware that it has; it appears
• 05:08 to stay static. For the second part of the transition, a different transition is applied to the objects on the slide. And, when the transition is
• 05:16 played, the objects will move but it appears as though the slide itself does not. So on slide 13 I will apply a rotate dynamic transition, and on
• 05:26 slide 14 I will apply a fly through dynamic transition. So let’s preview that in reading view from slide 12. Now of course slide 12 appears
• 05:34 immediately because no transition was applied to that. However when I click, slide 13 moves in but it appears that the background stays there,
• 05:42 and the same for slide 14. And again these transitions work both forwards and in a backwards direction. So please consider using
• 05:50 slide transitions, from subtle transitions, to group similar ideas together, to more exciting transitions between separate groups of ideas in
• 05:58 your story. On the transitions tab of the ribbon is the transitions to this slide group, options to advance the slide on mouse click or
• 06:06 automatically, as well as the option to apply that particular transition to all slides. And of course the effect options, and the button to preview
• 06:15 which allows you to preview the effect without going into slideshow mode. Remember that in addition to subtle and exciting transitions, there
• 06:23 are dynamic transitions where it is the objects on the slide that appear to move. Transitions work forwards and backwards as well and they
• 06:31 help increase the continuity of your presentation, but as always please don’t overuse them; it’s often better to stick to a
• 06:37 single style of transition throughout your whole presentation.

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