Getting Started with Morph in PowerPoint

Every new release of PowerPoint brings forth new features, and some of these features have made people sit up and take notice. The most popular of the features in the recent past has been the Morph transition effect. We explore this feature in the video below, and on the rest of this page.

What is Morph?

So, what exactly is Morph? Morph is a transition effect that you will find on the Transitions tab of the Ribbon, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 1, below. When you use the Morph transition, you get a total of three options in the Effect Options drop-down gallery, highlighted in blue within Figure 1, below.

Figure 1: Add the Morph transition

The default option though is Objects, and we will only use the Objects option on this page. In subsequent tutorials of this series, we will explore the Words and Characters options.

Working with Morph in PowerPoint

Follow along with us to explore how Morph can cope up with changes to size, position, and color attributes of a shape:

1. Our sample presentation has five slides that you can see in Slide Sorter view, as shown in Figure 2, below.
2. 
   Figure 2: Five slides in all
2. As you can see, all slides have the same Circle shape that has been resized, repositioned, or recolored in subsequent slides. To end up with similar results, create the first slide, and duplicate the slide. Now alter the Circle shape as needed in the second, duplicated slide. Then, repeat the process to end up with the five slides you see in Figure 2, above. You'll notice that the same circle in different sizes, positions, and colors exits in each of the five slides.
3. While, still in Slide Sorter view, select all slides to select all five slides at one go. The keyboard shortcut to select all slides in Slide Sorter view is Ctrl + A if you are using a Windows system. If you are using a Mac, you can use the similar ⌘ + A keyboard shortcut.


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4. Now, access the Transitions tab of the Ribbon. Choose the Morph option, highlighted in red within Figure 3, below. You can also choose timings for the slides. We selected a transition time of 00:03.00 seconds, as shown highlighted in blue within Figure 3.
5. 
   Figure 3: Choose the Morph transition and set timings
5. Now play your slides, and you will see that the results are so easy to achieve. Experiment with other shapes and techniques to find out what works with the Morph transition effect, and what doesn't.

In subsequent tutorials, we will look at how you can do so much more with the Morph transition effect in PowerPoint.