Whether you're new to PowerPoint 2010 or an experienced user, you may have used the Add Animations feature to add effects such as Entrance or Exit to items on a slide. Did you know you can change how these effects are triggered? This article summarises how to edit the trigger feature and shows how these can be used in a simple example.

Once you add details to a PowerPoint 2010 slide such as text headings, text bullet points, or objects such as images or, shapes, you can apply animation effects to each of these items. To do this you select an item, then in the Animations tab click the Add Animation button and select an effect. Once applied the effect animates when the slide is displayed in slide show view. The default trigger for the animation is ON CLICK, so in slide show view when the mouse is clicked anywhere on the slide, the effect will animate. You can easily change this setting by returning to regular slide design view. Then select the item the effect is assigned to and in the Animations tab click the Animation pane command. This pane will appear on the right of the display. Here you can change the animation trigger setting.

Suppose the slide has several objects such as shapes or images. If more than one animation has been applied on the slide, all the effects will be listed in the pane. In addition, a small number tag appears just beside the selected object on the slide. The number indicates the order the animations will trigger. You can click this number tag to select the effect, or click it directly in the animations pane. So to change the trigger for an effect, first select the effect, either by clicking on the number tag next to the object or by selecting the effect directly in the pane.

To change the trigger, right click on the named effect and choose Effect Options. The Appear panel is displayed. In the Appear panel choose the Timings tab and note the Triggers button in the lower left. Initially the Trigger button shows down facing arrows, indicating that clicking the button will expand the details available. If you click the button you'll see the trigger details. By default the option ANIMATE AS PART OF CLICK SEQUENCE is selected, meaning that each effect listed in the animations pane will be triggered by a mouse click, anywhere on the slide, in the order shown in the pane.

If you select the lower trigger option START EFFECT ON CLICK OF you can change the trigger source to any of the objects on the slide, but the Start selection in the upper part of the tab must remain at ON CLICK. So in slide show view you can click on a particular object, rather than anywhere on the slide, to trigger the animation. Back in PowerPoint regular design view, you'll see a small yellow lightening icon has replaced the animation number tag, to indicate an edited trigger. In the Appear panel's Timing tab you can also add a delay to the start of the effect following the trigger click.

Applying animation triggers through clicking objects allows you to selectively animate. We'll describe how this could be used in a practical example. Suppose your slide contains a multiple choice question in a text box with one correct answer and two wrong answers in separate text boxes. You also add two further text boxes, one with the text CORRECT and the other with the text WRONG. You want the appropriate box to appear once an answer is clicked. To make these two text boxes initially invisible, add the animation effect APPEAR to each. So now they will only show in slide show view when triggered. Then select the animation effect for the CORRECT text box and edit its trigger source to be the text box with the correct answer. Next, select the WRONG text box and edit its trigger source to be the text box with the first wrong answer.

For the second wrong answer you need to add a second trigger to the WRONG text box. To do this you need to once again click the Add Animation button in the Animation panel and choose APPEAR. Don't click APPEAR in the main part of the animation tab as this will just replace the original animation. You'll see that there are now two effects applied to the WRONG box. Edit the trigger for the second APPEAR effect to be the other wrong answer. Don't forget, adding an effect via the wide panel in the animations tab will replace the current one, so to add one or more animations you need to choose Add Animations.

So animation triggers in PowerPoint 2010 can easily be edited to allow triggering by clicking any slide object. You can also add multiple triggers to created effects from different trigger sources. Hopefully this short article has whetted your appetite to learn more about PowerPoint 2010. A really effective way to do this is to attend a training course. That way you can cover lots of topics in a short time and really boost your PowerPoint 2010 skills.