PowerPoint Tips & Tutorials

Create the effect of a line drawing itself

A cool effect is to sequentially display a line, so that it appears as if the line is drawing itself. I originally learned this technique in Macromedia Flash, but you can do it in PowerPoint as well. The one limitation is that you need a solid, single-color background. The instructions below are for PowerPoint 2003, but should work in earlier versions as well. 

I wanted to show the animation on this page. This is best done using Flash animation so I tried a couple of PowerPoint to Flash conversion programs that had trial versions:

• PPT2SWF: This is an inexpensive program ($49-$99) but it didn't work at all. I just got error messages.
• PresentationPro PowerConverter: This program costs $499. It worked, but didn't accurately convert all the animation. (It created one of the animations, but not both.)

I grant that the animation was a little complex. So I gave up trying to convert the animation and re-created the animation in Flash.

You can download the 1-slide presentation and see for yourself how it looks in PowerPoint. In addition to making the graph appear to draw itself, a second animation makes the word "Math" follows the graph. This animation was for a presentation my son gave in math class, "Math in the Market," about moving averages and other mathematical equations that people use to determine when to buy or sell an investment. My son's idea was to represent the title of the presentation as literally as possible. This animation was on the first slide and he wanted it to loop as he introduced the topic.

Here are the steps to create this animation in PowerPoint:

1. From the Drawing toolbar, choose AutoShapes > Lines > Line or Freeform. Draw a line or a group of lines that is mostly horizontal or mostly vertical. (You can use a diagonal direction as well.) You can also double-click the Line button on the Drawing toolbar and draw a series of lines.
2. From the Drawing toolbar insert a rectangle that completely covers the line or lines you just drew. 
3. Right-click the rectangle and choose Format > AutoShape. Click the Colors and Lines tab. Set the Line color to No Line. Set the Fill to the same color as the background of the slide. (I used a white background, the default, and a white rectangle.) Click OK to return to your slide. Notice that the rectangle has disappeared, but you can see its handles.
4. Choose Slide Show > Custom Animation. 
5. In the Custom Animation pane, click Add Effect > Exit > Fly Out. If you don't see that animation, choose More Effects. From the Basic section, choose Fly Out and click OK 
6. From the Direction drop-down list, choose To Right. (If your line goes mostly vertical, you might choose To Top or To Bottom. Other directions are available as well.) From the Speed drop-down list, choose Slow. If you want the animation to start automatically, choose After Previous from the Start drop-down list.
7. To loop the animation, select the rectangle's animation in the task pane and choose Timing from its drop-down list. From the Repeat drop-down list, choose Until End of Slide. Click OK.
8. Click the Play button on the Custom Animation task pane to see the animation or click the Slide Show button to view it in slide show mode.

How did we get "Math" to move along the line? It's just a text box with a motion path. I explain motion path animation in my tip, Motion Path Animation Effects. We found that the Draw Custom Path > Curve worked best, by clicking at each vertex of the chart line. From the Start drop-down list, we chose With Previous and from the Speed drop-down list we chose Slow.

However, there were two little problems:

• When we added the text box and its motion path (which we created to follow the graph), it was on top of the rectangle, so we had to change the order of the rectangle bring it to the front (Order > Bring to Front). However, it helped to temporarily send the rectangle to the back (Order > Send to Back) while we were creating the text animation.
• The motion path animation seemed to race ahead of the Fly Out animation, and then the text would disappear behind the rectangle. Unfortunately, PowerPoint only offers a few speed options, such as very slow, slow, medium, etc. However, you can enter your own speed in the Speed textbox to get the result you want. A speed of 3.5 seconds worked well. We also repeated the animation until the end of the slide. Here you see the Custom Path dialog box for the text box.

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