How to Set up a Trigger to Start a PowerPoint Animation

A special type of AutoShape that places a button on the slide.

Sometimes called a plug-in an auxiliary program that runs piggyback on another program. The add-in gives the program more functionality.

The ratio of the screen’s width to its height. Although 4:3 is a common aspect ratio, many newer computers use wide-screen displays.

A combination of a background color chosen from a theme color scheme and a background fill effect.

A collection of small dots that compose an image.

A series of paragraphs accented by special characters lovingly known as bullets.

A series of numbers rendered as a graph.

A predefined combination of chart elements such as legends, titles, and so on.

Pictures, sound, and motion clips available for using in your PowerPoint slides.

An invisible holding place. The Cut and Copy commands add stuff to the Clipboard, and the Paste command copies stuff from the Clipboard to your presentation.

A set of complementary colors chosen by designers that you can use in your presentations.

A set of design elements you can apply to slides in your presentation.

To cut off part of a graphic to include only the section you want on your PowerPoint slide.

Formatting that temporarily overrides the font setting specified by the theme.

A program that lets you create mathematical equations.

To rotate an object to create a mirror image of it.

PowerPoint offers various galleries that present you with visual options for changing an item on a slide. Rather than visit numerous dialog boxes and task panes, you can select a gallery choice and give many commands at one time.

Evenly spaced lines placed over your PowerPoint slide that help you layout objects on your slides.

A collection of objects that PowerPoint treats as though it were one object.

Lines that appear on-screen to help you layout objects on your PowerPoint slides.

The settings that determine and control the look of printed handouts in PowerPoint.

Element of Masters that provide different arrangements of text and other elements on the slide.

Programs written in a powerful programming language called Visual Basic for Applications.

A template that governs all aspects of a slide’s appearance: background color, objects that appear on every slide, text that appears on all slides, and more.

The process of breaking down the barriers between cells and joining them into one cell.

A route that an element follows around a slide when you animate it.

A list that is found inside another list.

The settings that determines the characteristics of printer speaker notes.

Located, beneath your selected slide, this pane is for adding notes to your slides.

Items, such as text, pictures, and charts that give meaning and content to otherwise formless and empty slides.

The logo in the top-left corner of the PowerPoint window the Office button. Click this button to reveal traditional menus.

A shape that is used to crop a picture.

An area on a slide that is reserved for text, clip art, a graph, or some other type of object.

A file with information about where different media files are located on a computer.

The measurement of a font — 1/72 of an inch.

A program that can display the presentation on a computer that doesn’t have PowerPoint installed.

To move a paragraph up one level in the outline.

A bar, located to the right of the Office button, that contains buttons to perform common tasks like saving, undoing, redoing, and printing with just one click each.

A collection of formatting elements, such as colors and shape effects, that are assigned to the various elements of a SmartArt diagram.

Icons and buttons across the top of the PowerPoint screen that meet all your navigational needs and provide access to the tools you need to create slides and presentations.

To turn an object on a slide so it faces another direction.

An explanatory word or two that appears when you move the pointer over a link.

The color that fills in an object.

The commands that add movement to individual objects on a slide.

A sample slide with one or more placeholders. For example, a slide that uses the Title layout has two placeholders for text objects: one for the title and the other for the subtitle. You use this as the starting place for creating your own slide.

A special type of document library on a SharePoint server that’s designed not to store whole documents, but individual slides.

A PowerPoint view that enables you to see an overall view of your presentation.

The on-screen effects as one slide changes to the next one during a PowerPoint presentation. Slide transitions can make your slides fade in and out, push each other off-screen, or open and close like blinds.

Labels that appear on your slides. You can click a smart tag to reveal a menu.

PowerPoint feature that enables you to create diagrams, organizational charts, and other graphical objects for your presentations.

To divide a single cell into several cells (or several cells into several more cells).

The bar at the bottom of the screen which tells you which slide is currently displayed.

Located to the right of your selected slide, this pane helps you to complete common tasks.

A starter file, created by artists, that sets things like font and point size for your slides.

A set of design elements you can apply to slides in your presentation.

A collection of complementary fonts that you can use in your PowerPoint presentations.

A title in which the first line is longer than the second.

Also called an event trigger, this is a means of playing an animation without regard to the order of animations on the Custom Animation list.

A picture file that contains a detailed definition of each shape that makes up the image.

The line along the bottom of the chart.