Powerpoint: Animated painting
Q. I’ve created a 24-slide presentation in PowerPoint that contains several hundred images, and I want to animate them so they bounce in one at a time, grow bigger, and then disappear, all at three-second intervals. Is it possible to animate all of my images at once?
A. You can animate all of the images on a single PowerPoint slide at the same time by holding down the Ctrl key while you select each image, and then applying the desired animation sequence to all selected images at the same time. However, this approach does not work across multiple slides, so in your situation you’ll need a different approach, as explained below.
PowerPoint 2010 and later editions include a tool called the Animation Painter that works similar to Excel’s Format Painter tool; it allows you to copy and paste the animations from a single object and then apply that animation (or sequence of animations) to other objects. For example, as suggested in the screenshot below (from a recent presentation I delivered), I selected the Intacct logo image and applied my desired animations. Next, with the Intacct logo image selected, I clicked the Animation Painter tool (which copied the animations from the Intacct image) and then clicked the Salesforce logo image to apply those animations.
To use the Animation Painter tool across multiple slides, simply double-click the Animation Painter icon so the tool sticks (i.e., so the tool remains selected even after you apply animation to another object(s)); this action will allow you to continue applying the selected animation sequence to multiple objects, even across multiple PowerPoint slides. When you are done, press the Esc key to release (or unstick) the Animation Painter tool.
About the author
J. Carlton Collins (carlton@asaresearch.com) is a technology consultant, a CPE instructor, and a JofA contributing editor.
Note: Instructions for Microsoft Office in “Technology Q&A” refer to the 2007 through 2016 versions, unless otherwise specified.
Submit a question
Do you have technology questions for this column? Or, after reading an answer, do you have a better solution? Send them to jofatech@aicpa.org. We regret being unable to individually answer all submitted questions.
