Reorder Animations in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

Animation effects in PowerPoint are numbered in the order in which they are added to slide objects. Of course, that may not be what you need. You might need to reorder your animations because you may have more than one animated object on a slide, and some objects may need to be animated before others to provide a better result. Or you may just want some animations to happen before other animations. Also, there are logical reasons to reorder animations since typically entrance and exit animations need to be the first and last animations for any slide object. PowerPoint's Reorder option for animations lets you play with their sequencing.

Follow these steps to reorder animations in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows:

1. Before you start, make a copy of your slide in the presentation. This duplication of the slide is easily achieved by selecting the slide in Slide Sorter view (see also our page on PowerPoint 2016 Views) or the Slides pane, and pressing the Ctrl+D keys together. This step 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!


PowerPoint Keyboard Shortcuts

Do you want more keyboard shortcuts?

Explore our PowerPoint Keyboard Shortcuts and Sequences Ebook that is updated for all PowerPoint versions.

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
3. Doing so opens the Animation Pane within the PowerPoint interface, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 2, below.
4. 
   Figure 2: Animation Pane within the PowerPoint interface
4. Within the Animation Pane, select any of the animations that you want to reorder. We chose the animation added to the shape named Explosion, as shown in Figure 3, below.
5. 
   Figure 3: Animation selected within the Animation Pane
5. Now, click the Reorder Up/Down arrow buttons, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 3, above located within the Animation Pane, or the Move Earlier or Move Later buttons, as shown highlighted in blue within Figure 3, within the Animations tab of the Ribbon, to re-position the selected animation in the list.

Drag to Reorder Animations

If there are plenty of animations listed within the Animation Pane, it may take a lot of time to re-position them using the above-mentioned buttons. In such a situation, first, select the animation that you want to reorder, and then drag it to the new position within the Animation Pane where you want it to appear.

6. Once you have reordered your animations, preview them to make sure that the results look like what you intended. You might have to tweak animation events if reordering made some changes to them.
7. Save your presentation.