(gentle melody)
- [Heather] Now it is possible to morph text in PowerPoint.
And in this movie, that is exactly
what we are going to be doing.
For this demo, what the slides say,
doesn't really matter because I'm going to be showing you
what options are available for morphing text in PowerPoint.
And there are a couple of different options
for how you can morph text.
Here in this presentation, yes, there are two slides
with just a simple text box
or a few different placeholders
on each of those two slides.
And on this second slide,
let's go up to the transitions tab
and apply that morph transition to that second slide.
Now, as you can see that preview displayed and showed us,
it just fades from this first slide to that second slide.
Let's show that preview again.
There it is.
It fades out and fades back in.
That doesn't look very special.
We might as well, at that point, apply the fade transition.
But if you notice right next
to all of those different transitions,
you have this button here called effect options.
And for morph, there are special transitions for text.
By default, anytime you apply the morph transition,
it's going to morph objects on the slide.
And all text is placed inside of the object
or that text box.
So it's going to be morphing that text
by that object, by that text box,
by that place holder,
which is why you see that object fade out and fade back in.
But with text, you have two more options.
You can have them fade out by words or by characters.
Now choosing the options words,
that's going to move the objects in individual words.
So in order for this to work,
you've got to keep the capitalization the same.
So let's go ahead and choose that.
And as you can see,
the only thing that is the same
from slide to slide is that word morph.
So let me show you that preview again.
There it goes, so all of the other words
that are different from slide to slide,
those will still fade out and fade back in,
but anything that is identical from slide to slide,
that will slide into its new position
or morph into its new position on that second slide.
And then everything else,
you can still apply all those other options.
So if we want it to appear faster,
we can change the duration to a shorter time,
or if we want it to appear slower,
we can lengthen that duration.
So let me hit that preview button again.
And there we go, we sped it up.
So now it's a little bit faster.
And that is morphing by words.
Now the third option here, characters,
that is going to move the objects
or the individual letters around.
And it's the same deal.
For that to work, capitalization must be the same
from slide to slide.
So let's choose that.
And there we go, any letters that appear the same
from the first slide to the second slide,
those are going to move around or fly into its new position.
Any letters that are different,
they're going to fade out and fade back in.
So let's see that one more time.
There's that preview.
And notice, it changed our duration back to the default,
two seconds.
So if we want that faster,
we have to change it again.
And those are your options
for how you can morph text in PowerPoint.
Now for a word of caution,
just because something is possible in PowerPoint,
just because of feature exist,
doesn't mean you have to use it.
I'm one of those PowerPoint people
that feels that PowerPoint is a visual medium
and that when text is used on a slide,
it should be used to clarify the visuals
or the message you are trying to communicate.
And the minute we start applying
crazy character level morph, animations to text,
I think it becomes less about your message,
and more about the novelty.
You don't want your animation to be a distraction.
Text is there to clarify.
And the minute we start moving and morphing the text around,
it becomes difficult to read
and it becomes distracting.
And with character level animation,
that is definitely a distraction,
even if it's during a transition.
So proceed with extreme caution
if you choose to morph text.
Don't forget that.
(gentle music)