Make text box dissapear with animation triggering

[drew]

I have a question relating to animation triggering. I have
successfully made text boxes appear with the click of other boxes. However,
how can I trigger them to disappear when you click on another text box? They
are on top of each other, and right now appear on top of each other. Somehow
making them nontransparent (so that you can't see the box underneath) will
probably also work, no? I tried that but couldn't figure how to do that.
I'd appreciate any help.

Thanks in advance.

 

[David Marcovitz]

I have a question relating to animation triggering. I have
successfully made text boxes appear with the click of other boxes. However,
how can I trigger them to disappear when you click on another text box? They
are on top of each other, and right now appear on top of each other. Somehow
making them nontransparent (so that you can't see the box underneath) will
probably also work, no? I tried that but couldn't figure how to do that.
I'd appreciate any help.

Thanks in advance.

The non-transparent idea will only work if you are clicking in just the
right order. Unfortunately, what you need is a whole bunch of animations.
This is not too hard if you are talking about 3 or 4 text boxes, but it can
get quite cumbersome with any more than that. Imagine you have three text
boxes: A, B, and C. You will need an entrance animation for and two exit
animations for each text box. Whatever triggers A to appear will also need
to trigger B and C to disappear. Whatever triggers B to appear will need to
trigger A and C to disappear. And whatever triggers C to appear will need to
trigger A and B to disappear. Thus you need N squared animations, where N is
the number of text boxes you have. With three, nine animations is a piece of
cake. But if you have 10 or 20 text boxes, you will need 100 or 400
animations.

There are VBA solutions that will be easier if you're into VBA (harder if
you're not). Another alternative is to do this with identical slides instead
of animation triggers. Each slide is identical except that it has a
different text box showing. Instead of triggering animations, you simply
jump to the correct slide. The viewer will never know the difference.

--David
--
David M. Marcovitz
Author of _Powerful PowerPoint for Educators_
http://www.PowerfulPowerPoint.com/
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
Associate Professor, Loyola University Maryland

 

[drew]

Thanks David!
I'm thinking about going with your idea of having multiple slides and having
them appear on click.
One question on that... how do I get entire slides to appear with an
animation trigger? For example, I want slide 3 to appear when I click on a
text box in slide 2, and slide 4 to appear with click on another text box in
slide 2, etc.

Thanks in advance.

 

[David Marcovitz]

Thanks David!
I'm thinking about going with your idea of having multiple slides and having
them appear on click.
One question on that... how do I get entire slides to appear with an
animation trigger? For example, I want slide 3 to appear when I click on a
text box in slide 2, and slide 4 to appear with click on another text box in
slide 2, etc.

Thanks in advance.

The trick is that you are not using animation triggers, just simple
hyperlinks to the slides. It will look the same, but it will simply jump to
another slide.
--David

--
David M. Marcovitz
Author of _Powerful PowerPoint for Educators_
http://www.PowerfulPowerPoint.com/
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
Associate Professor, Loyola University Maryland