Using Action Links to Combine Effects

You can tie each animated element on a slide to a hyperlink or action setting. When you click a hyperlinked element or an item that includes an action setting, the animation takes place before the hyperlink or action setting kicks in.

→ For hyperlink information specific to PowerPoint, see "Using Hyperlinks".

Combining custom animation and action settings needn't be overly confusing because they typically operate on different slide components. For example, you can apply a sound "animation" to the appearance of bullet points on a slide, but you can apply the sound "action setting" only to the words (and characters) in the bullet point.

Surprisingly, however, there's one action that you can implement only through hyperlinks and action settings: the mouse over. All the fancy animation techniques discussed in this chapter are tied to mouse clicks, or internal timers.

For example, if you want to make a video clip start by passing the mouse over the clip, you must use action settings. Select the clip, and then choose Slide Show, Action Settings, Mouse Over.