Transition Time
While the most basic presentations often don’t demand more than transitions between individual slides and bullet points, take the time to dive into the Builds Inspector pane, which lets you determine exactly when and how to bring individual text and graphics elements onto a slide. Click a specific text or graphic element on the slide, and set its Build transitions from the pop-ups. Build In brings elements onto the screen, and Build Out takes them away. There’s an ordering system expressed in numbers, 1 being the first thing that appears. The tough part is realizing that things can come and go in nonlinear order. For example, on the Build In side, a screen title might be 1, while 2 is assigned to a graphic element (in this case, a scary face) that comes up, and 3 is a text description of the graphic that appears after the image.

Now let’s say that you want the text (#3) to vanish with the next click, after which the face bursts into flames and vanishes: Click the Build Out pane, select the text, an effect, and select 4 from the Order popup. Click the face, select the Flame effect, and specify 5 for the order. As you can see from the screenshots shown here, you have total control over how individual elements appear on and disappear from the screen.

The slide title is assigned to #1 in the Build In panel, with a transition effect that moves it into the slide from above.

The face is assigned to #2, so it comes in after the title, with a Dissolve effect.

Last but not least is the text description, which is Build In item #3, and is set to simply “Appear” on the screen.

With the text selected, switch to the Build Out pane and choose any effect and #4 for ordering.

Select the face, the Flame effect, and #5 order for the face to burn up and vanish.