How to Create a Pop-Up in PowerPoint

Techwalla may earn compensation through affiliate links in this story. Learn more about our affiliate and product review process here.
Excellent PowerPoint slides emphasize the speaker over the design.
Image Credit: Creatas/Creatas/Getty Images

Telling a story with your PowerPoint presentation engages your audience in the process rather than making them passive recipients of information. Using pop-ups adds drama and intrigue that you can leverage into a narrative arc for your presentation. Animation effects in PowerPoint, when judiciously used, create dynamism; when used wantonly they become a distraction, to the detriment of the overall presentation. Ask yourself, before inserting a pop-up, whether or not it will add something irreplaceable to your presentation.

Advertisement

Create an Object

Video of the Day

Step 1

Launch PowerPoint -- if you haven't already -- and navigate to the slide where you want to create the pop-up.

Video of the Day

Step 2

Choose the "Insert" tab in the menu bar and select the type of object you want to use for the pop-up. You can use a shape, picture, graph or text box. You can insert text into a shape -- for example a callout shape.

Advertisement

Step 3

Place and format your object. Ideally the pop-up will maintain the design of the slide, but have enough contrast to be easily noticed when it pops up. When placing the object, put it where you want it to end up at the end of any animation.

Animate the Pop-up

Step 1

Select the object and then navigate to the Animation tab on the menu bar.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Step 2

Choose "Add Animation" and select your animation from the options. The Fly In, Float In and Zoom animations all offer the effect of the object popping into view. Fly In brings the object in from one side of the slide -- like the bottom. The Float in is similar, but the object fades into view as it moves onto the slide. The Zoom animation makes it appear that the object is appearing from beneath the slide.

Advertisement

Step 3

Select "Effect Options" to change how the pop-up effect is animated. For example with the Fly In animation, if you want to have the object fly in from the bottom of the screen, you would click the up arrow.

Advertisement

Advertisement

references & resources

Report an Issue

screenshot of the current page

Screenshot loading...