How (and How Not) to Use Builds in PowerPoint

By Ellen Finkelstein, Author of PowerPoint 2000 Professional Results

Would you like to focus your audience's attention on what you're saying? What if you could add some visual excitement at the same time? Builds, also called animation (although that's an exaggeration), can focus your audience on your current point while providing extra liveliness to your presentation. But as you'll soon see, builds should be done the right way or they can backfire. And sometimes, you shouldn't use them at all.

A build displays objects on your screen, one at a time. If you're using bulleted text, your viewers see only the paragraph you're discussing rather than reading the entire slide (and ignoring what you're saying). Then the next paragraph appears -- usually when you click your mouse -- and you discuss that paragraph. You can even dim the first paragraph when the second one appears.

You can also animate charts. For example, as you discuss last year's performance, the bar on the chart for last year appears. Then, when you're ready to discuss the current year's performance, the bar for this year appears.

To create builds, first create the objects you want to apply builds to. Then select the first object. If you are applying a build to bulleted text in a text placeholder, just select the placeholder.

Now choose Slide Show > Custom Animation to open the Custom Animation dialog box, shown in the figure. The Order & Timing tab specifies the order that the objects appear. If you have selected one text placeholder, only one object appears in the Animation Order box.

Usually, animated objects appear at your mouse click so you can control when the text or object appears, based on the pace of your presentation. If you select the object in the Animation Order box, you can choose to animate automatically, after a certain amount of seconds.

To apply a build to that object, click the Effects tab. Make sure the object is selected in the listing. In the Entry Animation and Sound section, use the drop-down box to select an animation effect.

You have lots of effects to choose from! Try each one out, at least when you create your first build to see what's available. After each choice, click the Preview button to watch the result.

Many of the choices have sub-options that you can choose from the drop-down list just to the right. For example, if you choose Fly, you can choose to fly from the top, bottom, bottom-left, etc.

Warning 1. Most of the choices are not suitable for a serious, button-down presentation. Some, like Crawl, and Swivel will just annoy your viewers or worse, make them laugh. To be conservative, stick to Appear, Fly Left, Peek and Wipe Down. Of course, if you want to give a flashier, multimedia impression, try out the other effects.

Use the After Animation section to dim the object or text to a different color. Just click on the drop-down arrow and pick a color. Usually, you dim to a color that is less contrasting with the background. You can even hide the object completely.

Warning 2. What if someone asks you a question about the relationship between your current point and the previous one? Dimming is not always wise. If you're not taking questions and if your presentation is very linear, it works. However, often people need to see the slide as a whole to understand the slide's overall topic. Furthermore, people may feel manipulated, as if you're trying to control what they think about.

Charts are a good example of when not to use dimming. Your audience needs to see the relationships created by the entire chart, for example, how much sales have increased over the last five years.

If you want to animate additional objects, select them in the top listing and then choose an effect for them.

For text, look to the right side of the Effects tab to specify how the text is animated. Usually, you want to use the default, Grouped by 1st Level Paragraphs. This option displays each bulleted paragraph in turn. If you have 2nd level bullets, choose 2nd from the drop-down list.

Warning 3. Don't forget that many slides encompass an entire idea and that seeing the entire idea all at once can foster deeper and more creative thinking compared to seeing pieces of the idea one at a time. In these cases, don't use builds at all.

Good luck and have fun!

Learn more about Ellen Finkelstein in our Contributors section.