Animate or make words appear one line at a time
Applies ToPowerPoint for Microsoft 365 PowerPoint for Microsoft 365 for Mac PowerPoint for the web PowerPoint 2024 PowerPoint 2024 for Mac PowerPoint 2021 PowerPoint 2021 for Mac PowerPoint 2019 PowerPoint 2019 for Mac PowerPoint 2016

An animation effect option called By Paragraph lets you make list items appear one at a time. This type of animation is sometimes called a build slide

Make text appear one line at a time

  1. On the slide, select the box that contains your text.

  2. Select the Animations tab, and then pick an animation, such as Appear, Fade In, or Fly In.

    Choose an animation from the gallery

    For some animations, such as Fly In, select Effects Options, as you’ll need to pick a direction for the bullets to fly in from, such as bottom, top, left, or right.

  3. Select Effect Options, and then select By Paragraph to make the paragraphs of text appear one at a time. (The other option, All at Once, makes all the lines of text appear at the same time.)

    PowerPoint immediately previews the animation for you.

By default, when you present in Slide Show, each paragraph appears in response to a click. That way, you control when each paragraph appears. You can modify this setting by using the Start, Duration, and Delay controls on the far right end of the Animation tab of the ribbon.

Make text appear one letter at a time

You can also create a "typing" visual effect by making characters in a paragraph appear one at a time.

  1. On the slide, select the box that contains your text.

  2. Select the Animations tab, and then select the Add Animation drop-down menu to select an animation, such as Appear.

    Choose an animation from the gallery

  3. Select the Animations tab, and then select Animation pane.

    The Animation Pane opens on the right side of the PowerPoint window.

  4. In the Animation Pane, select the arrow next to your animation, and select Effect Options.

  5. In the dialog box, on the Effect tab under Enhancements, select the arrow next to Animate text, and select By letter. Then you can change the delay time in the seconds delay between letters box.

    PowerPoint immediately previews the animation for you so that you can see the timing as the characters appear individually. You can repeat the preview by selecting the animation in the Animation Pane and selecting Play Selected.

See Also

Create a build slide

Change, remove or turn off animation effects

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