PowerPoint 2010: Animating the Pieces of a Grouped Object as a Whole

by AJ George

Last week I was revamping the presentation accompanying our Online Trainer Training: Engaging the Virtual Learner class when I ran into a bit of an animation shortcoming in PowerPoint. I wanted to animate the boat below so it "sailed" onto the slide.

 

 

Adding the animation effect was not a problem. I had the shapes grouped in one overall boat shape and selected Animations > Add Animation > Entrance > Fly In. Then from Animations > Effect Options, I selected From Right.

The problem was that after the boat "flew" in, I wanted little people to appear on the boat. For this to look best, I wanted part of the front of the boat, but not other parts, to overlap the people so they appeared to actually be on the hull of the boat like the image below.

 

To achieve this effect I would need to ungroup the drawing. However, once the drawing is ungrouped it loses its animation properties. If all the ungrouped pieces are selected and then the animation is applied, they will all fly in from the same place at the same time, regardless of their ending position, looking less like a boat sailing in and more like a boat exploding in reverse.

Here's the solution.

1. Assemble the pieces of the drawing, like in the first boat above.
   
   
2. Select all the pieces and group them ([Ctrl] [G]).
   
   
3. Copy ([Ctrl] [C]) and paste ([Ctrl] [V]) the drawing.
   
   
4. Apply the desired animation to the original boat (Animations > Add Animation > Entrance) and position it in its ending position.
   
   
5. Add a discreet exit animation to the original boat (Animations > Add Animation > Exit > Disappear).
   
   
6. On the animation pane (if you don't see this, select Animations > Animation Pane to view it now), click the down-arrow next to the boat drawing's exit animation and select Start After Previous.
   
   
7. Move the copy of the boat so that it exactly overlaps the original.
   
   
8. Ungroup the copy ([Ctrl] [Shift] [G]). Do not click anywhere else on the slide, so the pieces in the copy will all remain selected.
   
   Note: If the notion of keeping the pieces of the copy separate from the original sounds daunting to you, check out this article on using PowerPoint's selection pane. Naming all of the elements on your slide will help you keep them straight. Additionally, you can use the selection pane to temporarily hide things if they are in your way.
   
   
9. Add a discreet entrance animation to all of the copy's pieces (Animations > Add Animation > Entrance > Appear).
   
   
10. On the animation pane, hold down the [Shift] key while you select the first and last piece of the ungrouped boat on the list.
    
    
11. Click the down-arrow next to the first selected item and choose Start with Previous.

You have now set up the slide so that the grouped image of the boat first sails in, disappears and then, as it is disappearing, all of the ungrouped pieces of the same image appear.

Since you set the animation to disappear at the same time the pieces appear, your viewers will not notice that there are actually two boats on the screen. You will now be able to layer in other images to the drawing, such as the little people.

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About the author: AJ George is IconLogic's lead Technical Communicator and author of both "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials."