Complex Animations

Why?

Powerful customization of charts in PowerPoint.

This tutorial is an example of making PowerPoint do things that can't normally be done. In this case, we will tweak some chart animations that don't exist under normal circumstances.

This will be done in a simple way.

We will:

1. Create a chart with data,
2. Ungroup the chart into individual pieces,
3. Insert pictures that relate to the data,
4. Do some grouping + animation.

While this process will not be complex, I trust you will learn to look beyond what is available behind normal program options.

This tutorial is assuming PowerPoint 2000. PowerPoint XP (2002) is vastly superior, and has many more options.

First, start with a chart placeholder on your slide.



Then add data, which in this case is rainfall numbers in a 3d line chart. You will find the data sheet by double clicking the chart placeholder object.



Right click on the chart, select grouping, and ungroup. You will get this warning message:



This action will lose your data, so make sure you have another copy somewhere of your chart!



Click off the objects to deselect them. Each one of these objects can again be combined together into any "group" of objects.

Please note that the two text boxes in this example came about from the way the chart was placed on the slide. Your example may not be the same.

We then delete the two text boxes “Canberra” and “Brisbane” in this example. Replace with three pictures for each location.




In this example, the pictures were given the same outline colour as the data ribbons they represent: red, yellow and blue.



Select the light blue outlined picture, and each part of the light blue ribbon by clicking one piece, while holding the shift key and clicking more (ppt 2000 and higher).



Group the objects, (right click on one of the selected objects and select grouping). Then set custom animation to wipe right. Repeat for the other two data series.

Now we show how it works by running it as a slide show. You may download this example which shows two slides. The first slide has the original animated chart, and a second with the new animation format.

DOWNLOAD EXAMPLE (236 KB).

Please note, this is in PowerPoint 2000. For other formats (97 or less), please e-mail me and I can send it to you.