Reorder Animations in PowerPoint 2007, 2003, and 2002 for Windows

You need to reorder your animations mainly because you might have more than one animated object on a slide, and you discover that some re-sequencing of animations as they happen in relation to each other may provide a better result. For something of this sort, PowerPoint provides a Reorder option that lets you play with the sequence of the animation:

Follow these steps to reorder existing animations in PowerPoint 2007, 2003, and 2002 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 PowerPoint Views) or 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 sure that the Custom Animation Task Pane is visible, as shown in Figure 1. If this Task Pane is not visible, you won't be able to see or select any animations.
3. For PowerPoint 2007 users, make sure that the shape is still selected, then activate the Animations tab of the Ribbon. Next click the Custom Animation button to bring up a Task Pane of the same name that you can see in Figure 1. Remember, this is a toggle option: click once to show the Custom Animation Task Pane, and click again to hide it!
4. Users of earlier PowerPoint versions (PowerPoint 2002 and 2003) can again make sure that the object is selected. Then, they should choose the Slide Show | Custom Animation option to access a similar Task Pane, as shown in Figure 1.
3. Select any of the animations in the Custom Animation Pane that you want to reorder, as shown in Figure 1, below.
4. 
   Figure 1: Custom Animation Task Pane
4. Now, click either of the Reorder Up/Down arrow buttons, located under the Animations listing, as shown in Figure 2, below.
5. 
   Figure 2: Reorder buttons
5. 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.
6. Save your presentation.