Change Animations in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows

Let's say you have used a Fade animation for a slide object, and now you want to use a Wipe animation instead. It's been observed that most of the time, typical users just remove an animation and apply another one rather than using the change animation option. This may be because in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows, you see no Change option within the interface, but it's still a very easy one-click operation to change an existing animation to another one, as you will learn in this tutorial. The need to change an animation may arise for several reasons:

• You realize that another animation type would work better
• You want to make all animations across all slides in the presentation consistent
• You want to use a more subtle or exciting animation

Follow these steps to change an existing animation effect to another one in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows:

1. Before you start, make a duplicate copy of your slide in the presentation. This is easily achieved by selecting the slide in Slide Sorter view (see also PowerPoint 2010 Views) or within the Slides pane, and pressing Ctrl+D. This duplicates the slide, and it's good to know that you have a copy of the slide that you can go back to just in case!


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2. Next, make the Animation Pane visible, by accessing the Animations tab of the Ribbon and clicking the Animation Pane button, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 1, below.
3. 
   Figure 1: Animation Pane button

The Animation Pane is So Useful

The reason why we enabled the Animation Pane is to confirm whether the selected animation changes.

3. Now, select the particular animation that you want to change to another animation, as shown in Figure 2, below.
4. 
   Figure 2: Slide object with animation applied
4. Proceed to the Animations tab of the Ribbon, and within the Animation section, click the downward pointing arrow, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 3, below.
5. 
   Figure 3: More button for the Animation gallery
5. Doing so opens the Animation gallery, as shown in Figure 4, below. Note that the selected slide object already has an Entrance (Fly In) effect applied. Choose any of the other animations to replace the existing animation. For this tutorial, we clicked on the Emphasis (Color Pulse) effect, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 4.
6. 
   Figure 4: New animation selected within the Animation gallery
7. Note that as you hover the cursor over the animation thumbnails within the Animation gallery, you can view a live preview of the animation. Click the animation thumbnail to remove the previous animation, and apply the new animation effect to the selected shape.
6. Save your presentation.