Animation Events in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows

Once you add animation to any slide object, you can play the animation in Slide Show view by clicking your mouse cursor or pressing the Spacebar on your keyboard. Another option is to use a button on a presentation remote. Each of these options advances one animation at a time, or may even take you to the subsequent slide. While this approach works for slides that have an animation or two, you will quickly realize that this is certainly not the way to go if your slides have tens of animations, or more. If you add that many animations to any slide, you probably want your animations to be automatically sequenced and play one after the other without a click, that's exactly where PowerPoint's animation events can help.

PowerPoint supports three types of animation events:

1. On Click

This is the default animation event for any animation applied to a slide object. This animation can be played by either clicking the left (or default) mouse button, pressing the Spacebar or Right Arrow button on the keyboard, or activating a specific button on a presentation remote control.

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2. With Previous

This animation event is set to play simultaneously with any previous animation(s) listed on the Animation Task pane for the same slide. If there are no previous animations on the slide, this animation plays immediately after the slide transition.

3. After Previous

This animation event plays instantly after a previous animation finishes playing on a slide. If there are no previous animations on the slide, this animation plays immediately after the slide transition.

Follow these steps to change the animation event for any animation in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows:

Select the slide object that has an animation applied. To learn how to apply animation, refer to our Adding an Animation in PowerPoint 2013 tutorial.
With the slide object still selected, access the Animations tab of the Ribbon, and locate the Start box, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 1, below.
Figure 1: Start box within the Animations tab
Now, click the down-arrow next to the Start box to open the Animation Events drop-down list, as shown in Figure 2, below.
Figure 2: Animation events drop-down list
Choose any animation event based on your requirement for the selected animation. Test the animation by playing the slide.
Save your presentation.

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