lazyweb: pres.. ent.. ations

[lovingboth]

In OpenOffice.org Presentation / MS PowerPoint, many people have

* one line

* appearing

* at a time

rather than everything on a slide at once.

I do this by copying the slide several times, then deleting text, so that slide 1 has 'one line', slide 2 has 'one line / appearing' and slide 3 has the lot.

Is there an easier way?

Comments

[purrthecat.livejournal.com]

Yes, go into the "Slide Show" tab at the top, "Custom Animation", then, you should be able to select each section you want and order them. Then click each to apply "Fly in from..." or whatever little effect you want from the list.

I hope this helps.

Each line will need to be in its own text box to be animated separately. But otherwise, that should give you alot more control with your presentation. Make sure you preview before closing, and watch the slide show preview all the way through before being sure you're 'done' :)

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Beat me too it - yes, you want Slide Show > Animation and you'll need to put each line you want to 'appear' in its own text box.

[juudes.livejournal.com]

You don't need to have each line in a different text box; under Slide Show > Custom Animation you can introduce text 'all at once' and 'grouped by 1st level paragraphs' (assuming you've set it up correctly using the automatic slide formatting). (This is in MS PPt, at least, but I guess it would be similar in Open Office).

[lovingboth]

Thanks to all of you...

I'm not sure I'll use it much, but someone else is going to be very pleased.

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

You can build scripted animations that will do that on a slide - make sure you trigger them from key/mouse presses rather than use a timer...

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

* I have

* An intense personal

* Dislike of that style of presentation

If it's a diagram that builds up in a logical way then fine - although I'd much prefer to see the whole first and then see how it builds up. Text always seems entirely pointless.

I have some rationalisations for what is - I should confess - an instinctive dislike. It's effectively relying on the audience listening and attending at the presenter's pace, never getting distracted, and on the presenter perfectly working out in advance how much attention every single member of the audience needs to pay to every single point on the slide. It prevents audience members from skimming your slide when it first comes up, and then zoning out if there's nothing interesting/they don't quite get, until the next slide comes up. Unless you're giving a very short talk so there isn't time to switch, people *will* be zoning in and out anyway - you're just making it harder for them to do it without losing the thread. It stops the audience skimming ahead to stuff they find interesting/difficult and taking the spare time to start thinking about that before you get to it, while you explain the other stuff on the slide to people who find *that bit* interesting/difficult. If you feel you need to do it, it's (to my mind) a sign that you haven't thought through how to structure that bit of your talk properly. If you feel you must do it on every slide, I think you're entirely wrong. YMMV, of course :-)

If it's combined with pointless cheesy text animations or transitions (any, basically) I start getting close to finding the presentation mode so annoying I can't concentrate on what the speaker's actually saying even if I'm interested.

Sorry - caught me in ranty mode this afternoon!

[lovingboth]

Yeah, I can find it annoying too, but not quite as much as partially covering up an OHP slide.

At least as I do them :) the most important bit is at the bottom, and it's a bit silly to leave that on display for the least time.

Indeed, death to transitions!