Using Tracing Paths and Animated Text

Slide 9

PowerPoint XP has some really neat new features that you might like to try.  You can

 “trace a path” for an image to follow around or across the slide.  You can have a porpoise jumping in and out of the water at the bottom of the slide, or maybe a bee flying around in the top portion.  If you want to do this we’ll show you how.  If not, skip to Page 37.

Click the New Slide Button.  

For this slide choose the left slide in the third row – Blank.

First, following the process outlined for several other slides, we went to Clips Online and found a cute bee.  We then downloaded the bee into our Clip Organizer.  Then, we copied the bee from the Clip Organizer and pasted it onto the blank slide template.  We made the size of the bee fairly small and then moved the bee to the lower left corner of the blank slide template.  We then placed our cursor over the bee and clicked the RIGHT mouse button to bring up a menu which includes Custom Animation.  We then selected Custom Animation (see image at left).

When we clicked-on Custom Animation (above) we saw the Add Effect Button appear.  We clicked on the Add Effect button, and in the menu that appeared below, we clicked-on Motion Paths.  In the next menu that appeared we moved down and clicked-on Draw Custom Path.  In the last menu to appear we clicked-on Freeform.

After clicking-on Freeform, we moved our mouse into the template slide and noticed that our cursor image had changed to “cross hairs.”  We moved the crosshairs over the bee in the lower left corner of the slide template and held down the left mouse button.  With the left button held down we slowly began to move the cursor to the top of the template.  We noticed that the cursor now looked like a little pencil.  As long as we held down the left mouse button the pencil traced a path around the slide. 

To turn off the pencil, we simply clicked the left mouse button twice – quickly – and the pencil went away.  As soon as we quickly clicked twice, we also noticed that our bee flew very, very fast around the path we had drawn.

Below is what our slide looked like when we finished.

You can see the “flight path” for our bee begins in the lower left corner and goes up and down around the slide and exits at the right.

 Now we’ll slow our bee down a lot and insert a buzzing sound as the bee flies around.

On the right side of the screen, in the Custom Animation portion of the screen, we noticed that when we completed that bee flight path that something new appeared.

When we clicked-on the small triangle on the right of this image selection, we saw a drop down menu similar to the one on the right.  We clicked-on Effect Options and the image at the top of the next page appeared.

Since we selected Custom Path to create our flying bee effect, the menu screen at the right appeared when we clicked-on Effect Options.  Notice, at the top of the menu, there are two tabs.  We are “on” the Timing tab.  Our bee flew very fast and we would like to slow it down.  So, we chose 5 seconds (Very Slow).  We also wanted our bee to wait a few seconds after we moved to Slide 9 to begin its flying.  So, we also chose a delay of three seconds (see arrows to the right).  To complete this menu screen click OK.

To slow our bee down even more we can again chose Effect Options and typed in 20 (seconds).  This will really slow the path.  Experiment and choose a time that you like.

To insert a sound with our bee image (buzzing), we went to Clips Online once more and for our search topic entered “buzzing” and found a number of buzzing sounds.  We downloaded these as we’ve done before. 

To add a sound to your image is a bit tricky.  You again click-on Event Options (bottom right Page 35) as you did before.  When the menu screen appears (like the one to the left) choose the Effect tab.

Then click-on the triangle to the right of Sound and move down the menu until you see Other Sound.  Click-on Other Sound.  A menu screen will appear similar to the one at the top of the next page. 

Click the small triangle to the right of Look in.  When the drop down screen appears, select My Documents (double-click twice quickly on My Documents or click-on Open), then select Pictures (double-click or Open) and then select Microsoft Clip Organizer (double-click or Open). 

You should then see a menu screen similar to the one on the left.  The “goofy” numbers you see are the “names” of the sounds you downloaded!  We said this was tricky.  So, click-on one of the sounds and then click-on OK.  This will take you back to the menu screen at the bottom of Page 36 above.  You will hear your sound play if your volume is set high enough. 

To complete your menu screen click OK.

 Note:  if you “loose or don’t see the path” that you drew for your image, RIGHT click-on the image and choose Custom Animation like you did before.  This will cause the path to reappear and the right side of your screen to again show the Custom Animation area.

At the bottom of the Custom Animation area on the right side of the screen you will notice that the area looks like the image to the right.  Anytime you are working with animation you will see this image.  Notice that you can Play (again) your animation effects anytime you desire by clicking-on the Play button.  If you desire to see this how this slide will “look” when you present your PowerPoint slide show, click-on Slide Show (we’re going to get to this next for the entire show).

Viewing the Slide Show