Create a Looping Introduction
By Ellen Finkelstein
It's often helpful to have some animation showing when an audience files into the room, just to elicit some interest. When you're ready, you can stop it and start the main part of your presentation.
I'm going to tell you about two techniques to accomplish this.
Use a Looping Presentation and Link to a Later "First" Slide
This technique uses a looped presentation in which all the slides except your introductory animation are hidden. Because of this, you only see the introduction.
Then you use a button to link to the slide that acts as the first slide of your main presentation. Even though that slide is hidden, PowerPoint displays it, as well as the rest of the hidden slides.
- Create some slides with a welcoming message before your main presentation.
- Save the presentation.
- Select all the slides in the Slides pane (click the first, press and hold Shift, and click the last). Choose Slide Show> Slide Transition. (In PowerPoint 2007, click the Animations tab.)
In the Advance Slide section of the Slide Transition task pane, check Automatically After and enter a number of seconds. (In PowerPoint 2007, do this on the Animations tab.) I found that 3 seconds worked for the above slides.
Uncheck On Mouse Click.
If you want, you can add a transition effect.
Choose Slide Show> Set Up Show. (In PowerPoint 2007, click the Slide Show tab, and click the Set Up Slide Show button.) In the Show Options section of the Set Up Show dialog box, check the Loop Continuously Until 'Esc' check box. The Advance Slides section should have the Use Timings, If Present option checked. This loops the entire presentation. Click OK.
To create a button to link to your main presentation, you can use an Action Button. (From the Drawing toolbar, choose AutoShapes> Action Buttons. In PowerPoint 2007, choose Shapes on the Insert tab and choose an Action Button)
But I chose to create an invisible button. To do so, drag a rectangle at the lower-right corner of the first slide.
With the button selected, choose Slide Show> Action Settings. (In PowerPoint 2007, choose Action on the Insert tab.)
In the Action Settings dialog box, choose the Hyperlink To option. From the drop-down list, choose Slide. (Be sure not to choose Next Slide, because that will bring you to the next slide in the looping introduction!)
In the Hyperlink to Slide dialog box, navigate to the first slide of your main presentation (in this example, the 4th slide), and click OK twice.
Double-click the rectangle on the first slide. (In PowerPoint 2007, click the Format tab, and click the dialog box launcher button in the Shape Styles group.)
In the Format AutoShape dialog box, in the Fill section of the Color and Lines tab, drag the Transparency slider to 100%. (In PowerPoint 2007, click the Fill category to do this.)
In the Line section, set the Line Color to No Line. (In PowerPoint 2007, do this in the Line Color pane.) This makes the rectangle invisible. (This method of using transparency also ensures that you can copy and paste the button without losing the hyperlink.)
You want to be able to move to your main presentation at any slide of the intro, so copy the button to the Clipboard and paste it into the other two slides of your introduction.
If you tried out your presentation now, it wouldn't loop. Why? Because the rest of the slides (your main presentation) are probably set to advance On Mouse Click (which they should be). So the presentation advances to the first slide of your main presentation and just sits there, waiting for a click.
To get the looping effect, you need to hide the rest of the slides. In the Slides pane, select them and choose Slide Show> Hide Slide. (In PowerPoint 2007, click Hide Slide on the Slide Show tab.)
Make sure rest of slides are set up to advance On Mouse Click. To do so, with them all still selected, choose Slide Show> Slide Transition.
In the Advance Slide section, the On Mouse Click checkbox should be checked and the Automatically After check box should be empty. (In PowerPoint 2007, click the Animations tab and look under Advance Slide.)
Save again and try out your presentation. The first 3 slides will loop over and over because all the other slides are hidden.
When you're ready to start, click the lower-right corner of any of the slides in the introduction to move to the first slide of the main presentation.
When you get to the last slide, you may click and realize that you've gone back to the first slide of the introduction! That's because the slide is looped, but you don't want that to happen.
A looped slide doesn't have a black warning slide at the end, so you should create one. Add a new slide at the end and make its background black. When you get to that slide, after the audience leaves, just press Esc to return to Normal view.
Loop a Motion Path Animation on One Slide
Motion path animation has one unique quality; you can auto-reverse it. This plays the animation in reverse after the original path is complete, so that your object returns to its starting point. You can repeat motion path animation (like any other animation) and the net effect of both features is to loop the animation. Here are the steps:
Insert a new slide before your main presentation. It might have some Welcome text on it. Insert an object that you want to move around continuously on the slide. A good location is at a corner of the slide.
Choose Slide Show> Custom Animation. (In PowerPoint 2007, choose Custom Animation on the Animations tab.)
Select the object that you inserted. In the Custom Animation task pane, choose Add Effect> Motion Paths> Draw Custom Path> Curve.
Click on the object.
Then continue to click at points where you want the curve to change direction, until you end up at the opposite corner of the slide. The more complex the curve, the more interesting the animation will be.
Double-click to end the motion path. (I've changed the coloring of the slide so you can see the motion path more clearly.)
Select the animation's item in the task pane. Change the Start value to With Previous, so that the animation starts automatically. Change the speed to Slow or Very Slow so that your audience doesn't get a headache trying to follow the object.
Click the item's down arrow and choose Effect Options. Check the Auto-reverse check box. I left the Smooth Start and Smooth End check boxes checked, but you can try the animation without a smooth start and end, to see if you like it better.
Click the Timing tab.
From the Repeat drop-down list, choose Until Next Click.
Choose OK.
Try out the animation. The animation will loop until you click the slide. Then you'll move on to the next slide, which is the first slide of your main presentation.
For another technique, look at Taj Simmons' "Looping Presentations -- but not all of them!" technique.
Original article written by Ellen Finkelstein and first published on EllenFinkelstein.com on October 18th 2007 as "Create a looping introduction".
About the author
Ellen Finkelstein is the author of How to Do Everything with PowerPoint 2007 (and editions on previous versions). This book thoroughly covers all PowerPoint features, as well as best practices, design concepts, content techniques, delivery tips, and more. It includes a companion web site with free downloads. Her latest book is PowerPoint for Teachers: Dynamic Presentations and Interactive Classroom Projects, which shows teachers how to use PowerPoint to improve educational outcomes in the classroom. She publishes the free PowerPoint Tips Newsletter monthly, available at www.ellenfinkelstein.com, where you can go to find many excellent tips and techniques.
