Animate one word within a text box

[Guest]

I'm trying to animate one word within a text box so that the rest of the text
appears, and on a click the one word appears. Is this possible without
putting that word in a second text box?

 

[leef_me]

I'm trying to animate one word within a text box so that the rest of the text
appears, and on a click the one word appears. Is this possible without
putting that word in a second text box?

How about putting a rectangle shape on top of the word that you want to
hide.
In recent versions of PPT 2002,03 (not sure about 2000 or 95) you can
format an autoshape to have 'no' line color and a fill of 'background'.
The rest of the text can appear first, then the one word seems to
appear when the autoshape is hidden.

HTH,
Leef_me

 

[Echo S]

I'm trying to animate one word within a text box so that the rest of the text
appears, and on a click the one word appears. Is this possible without
putting that word in a second text box?

No, there's no other way to animate just the one word. You'll need to create
a second textbox.

Here's some advice borne of experience for anyone else reading this thread,
as it doesn't really affect your specific animation needs. If you're trying
to overlay a textbox onto another (say you want to highlight words or
phrases by changing the color of one word or a phrase in a textbox and have
it oh, zoom in or something), sometimes the textbox with the one word won't
line up exactly with the existing word (which is in a textbox with the other
text). This is PPT trying to be helpful -- it tries to make the text look
good, so it adjusts the spacing between the letters and words in a textbox.
Problem is, that spacing in the one-word (or short phrase) textbox may be
just enough different from the spacing between the letters and words in the
"full" textbox that the words no longer align when you layer one on top of
the other.

There's no fix for this.

The only workaround I know is to copy the full textbox and animate that. It
will work if your goal is to, say, change the color of one word (just change
the color of the one word in the copy of the textbox and animate it to
appear), but it may not work well for other animations.

I've experimented with using images for this, and sometimes PNGs look okay.
Right-click the full textbox and Save as Picture (choose PNG as type).
Change the color of the text on the slide as necessary and save as picture
again. Delete the textbox(es) and insert the two PNGs. Crop one of them down
to the word(s) you need using the crop tool on the Picture toolbar. Finally,
align it atop the PNG with the full text.

 

[Troy @ TLC Creative]

Echo,

I just did this for a presentation. Use the SoftShadow add-in to render the
text as a .png, but with the shadow settings set to 0,0 (eg no shadow).
Renders the text perfectly spaced and in the same position. Then use the
crop tool to get rid of everything but the key word/phrase, which I then
animated on (in this case I duped the original text box, made all the text a
bright yellow, so the .png version became my animated yellow text). All is
accomplished directly in PPT.

- For everyone else, SoftShadow is a new PPT add-in that renders text or
objects as .png images, adding PhotoShop quality dropshadows (in this case I
eliminated the drop shadow function). Details here:
http://www.pptxtreme.com/softshadow.asp

--
Best Regards,
Troy Chollar
TLC Creative Services, Inc.
www.tlccreative.com
troy at tlccreative dot com
==============================
A Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
==============================

 

[Guest]

Thanks, that's a big help.

No, there's no other way to animate just the one word. You'll need to create
a second textbox.

Here's some advice borne of experience for anyone else reading this thread,
as it doesn't really affect your specific animation needs. If you're trying
to overlay a textbox onto another (say you want to highlight words or
phrases by changing the color of one word or a phrase in a textbox and have
it oh, zoom in or something), sometimes the textbox with the one word won't
line up exactly with the existing word (which is in a textbox with the other
text). This is PPT trying to be helpful -- it tries to make the text look
good, so it adjusts the spacing between the letters and words in a textbox.
Problem is, that spacing in the one-word (or short phrase) textbox may be
just enough different from the spacing between the letters and words in the
"full" textbox that the words no longer align when you layer one on top of
the other.

There's no fix for this.

The only workaround I know is to copy the full textbox and animate that. It
will work if your goal is to, say, change the color of one word (just change
the color of the one word in the copy of the textbox and animate it to
appear), but it may not work well for other animations.

I've experimented with using images for this, and sometimes PNGs look okay.
Right-click the full textbox and Save as Picture (choose PNG as type).
Change the color of the text on the slide as necessary and save as picture
again. Delete the textbox(es) and insert the two PNGs. Crop one of them down
to the word(s) you need using the crop tool on the Picture toolbar. Finally,
align it atop the PNG with the full text.

 

[leef_me]

Echo S,
It seems like my reply to 'pptguydudeman' didn't get out, I posted 1.5
hours after 'pptguydudeman' and your reply came 7.5 hours after mine.

I suggested using an autoshape formatted to 'background color" to hide
the 'one word' that was to appear later. Did you see my post?

---

AFAIK, you have been around quite a while in this group, thanks for
your service. That said, I challenge a few of your statements. Granted
that 2 animated text boxes may not zoom-in at the same rate.
But, if you mean to say that a 2nd test box with just one word cannot
be
aligned manually to >exactly< overlay that same word in the first text
box, then you aren't doing it right.

If the font, size, bold, underline, etc of the 2 text boxes are the
same, then the space between chracters of a given string of characters
(kerning) will be the same in both boxes.


Word can do that, Powerpoint doesn't.

Leef_me

 

[Echo S]

Very cool workaround, Troy. I don't know if I would have thought to use
SoftShadow (which, I agree, is a *very* cool tool!) even if I'd had to do
this recently enough that SoftShadow would have been available!

 

[Echo S]

Echo S,
It seems like my reply to 'pptguydudeman' didn't get out, I posted 1.5
hours after 'pptguydudeman' and your reply came 7.5 hours after mine.

I suggested using an autoshape formatted to 'background color" to hide
the 'one word' that was to appear later. Did you see my post?

Yes, I do (and did) see your post. You can indeed use a background-colored
object to cover one word, but whether or not that does the trick for the
original poster really depends on exactly what he needs to animate and how.
For that reason, having a number of various options is usually a good thing.

Also, if pptguydudeman isn't using PPT 2002 or 2003, he won't be able to
apply an exit animation to the background-colored object, so he'd still have
to put the one word in a separate textbox and animate it in.

So that's what got me thinking about some "highlight text" I was animating
in over existing text some months ago. And I thought I'd just take the
opportunity to add some information to the collective knowledgebase.

AFAIK, you have been around quite a while in this group, thanks for
your service. That said, I challenge a few of your statements. Granted
that 2 animated text boxes may not zoom-in at the same rate.
But, if you mean to say that a 2nd test box with just one word cannot
be
aligned manually to >exactly< overlay that same word in the first text
box, then you aren't doing it right.

Okay, if you say so. But when I had problems with this, I actually sent it
to the guy who headed up multimedia and animation for PPT, and he's the one
who told me it was an issue with PPT trying to be helpful. So I guess he's
not doing it right, either.

textbox.

If the font, size, bold, underline, etc of the 2 text boxes are the
same, then the space between chracters of a given string of characters
(kerning) will be the same in both boxes.

Sure. But what I was describing is one text box with a lot of words and an
overlay textbox with only one or two of those words.

For example, maybe my slide has a textbox that says

Drug A is the best for stomach aches, allergies, and lazy eyes.

Now, maybe this presentation is being given to a bunch of stomach
specialists, so the client wants to highlight the phrase "best for stomach
aches." So you copy the text box, change the color of the text to orange,
and delete "Drut A is the" and ", allergies, and lazy eyes." The intent is
to animate in (maybe a zoom or a fade) the orange text so it covers the
existing white (or whatever color) text.

The short textbox, "best for stomach aches," won't align perfectly on top of
the long textbox, "Drug A is the best for stomach aches, allergies, and lazy
eyes." It won't align well enough to completely cover the text below it so
it looks as if the text below has disappeared--well, really, the goal is to
make it look like that text has changed color from white to orange. So you
don't want any of the existing text peeking out from behind any of the
letters.

Of course, not all text will exhibit this behavior, and some fonts and sizes
seem to be worse than others. And it may have to do with the display
settings, too, as it never looks exactly the same on the various systems
I've viewed such slides on. I was just tossing this out as a general
caveat -- the original question about animating one word made me remember
the struggles I had with this quite a few months ago.

Word can do that, Powerpoint doesn't.

I'm not sure what you're referring to here.

 

[leef_me]

Yes, I do (and did) see your post.

Thanks for the info.

Also, if pptguydudeman isn't using PPT 2002 or 2003, he won't be able to
apply an exit animation to the background-colored object, so he'd still have
to put the one word in a separate textbox and animate it in.
True.


So that's what got me thinking about some "highlight text" I was animating
in over existing text some months ago. And I thought I'd just take the
opportunity to add some information to the collective knowledgebase.

Okay, if you say so. But when I had problems with this, I actually
sent it

to the guy who headed up multimedia and animation for PPT, and he's the one
who told me it was an issue with PPT trying to be helpful. So I guess he's
not doing it right, either.

textbox.

I apologize. I am wrong.
I had tried a similar exercise as you suggested, and it worked in
several fonts and sizes. I tried it in ppt2000 just now and it acts
just as you describe. I used black background, white original text and
orange highlight text. The white text peeks around the highlight text
no matter how I move it.

My reference to Word was that it can align text 'justified' by adding
variable space so as to align both left and right edges of the text
paragraph.

Leef_me

 

[Echo S]

I apologize. I am wrong.
I had tried a similar exercise as you suggested, and it worked in
several fonts and sizes. I tried it in ppt2000 just now and it acts
just as you describe. I used black background, white original text and
orange highlight text. The white text peeks around the highlight text
no matter how I move it.

Oh, no worries, leef_me, and no need to apologize. In fact, thanks for
presenting your challenge -- it made me clarify what I was talking about,
which is always a good thing.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, maybe!), this behavior isn't consistent
across all presentations. It's *very* situational.

My reference to Word was that it can align text 'justified' by adding
variable space so as to align both left and right edges of the text
paragraph.

Aaahhhhhh. Gotcha!

Cheers,
Echo