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Using Slide Transitions in PowerPoint 2003

Date:Friday, August 12 2005

A transition is how PowerPoint gets from one slide to the next during an on-screen slide show. The normal way to segue from slide to slide is simply to cut to the new slide — effective, yes, but also boring. PowerPoint enables you to assign any of more than 50 different special effects to each slide transition. For example, you can have the next slide scoot over the top of the current slide from any direction, or you can have the current slide scoot off the screen in any direction to reveal the next slide. You can have slides fade out, dissolve into each other, open up like Venetian blinds, or spin in like spokes on a wheel.

To use a slide transition, follow these steps:

1. Move to the slide to which you want to apply the transition.

If you want to apply the animation scheme to all your slides, you can skip this step because it won't matter which slide you start from.

If you want to apply different transitions to different slides, you may prefer to work in Slide Sorter View (click the Slide Sorter View button near the bottom left corner of the screen), which allows you to see more slides at once. Slide Sorter View also has a few added bells and whistles for working with transitions. If you're going to use the same transition for all your slides, though, there's no benefit from switching to Slide Sorter View.