Did you ever wonder why we sometimes call a presentation a slide show? It’s because in the early days of projectors, physical slides slide into the lens area from one side and exited from the other. The result was that the slides actually slid!

You can create the same effect, and even better, using the Push Left slide transition.

To apply the Push Left slide transition:

1. Choose Slide Show | Slide Transition from the menu bar. From the list, choose Push Left. (In PowerPoint 2007, go to the Animations tab, and in the Transition To This Slide group, click the More button to display the Transition Gallery. In the Push And Cover section, choose Push Left.)
2. In the Speed box, choose Slow; otherwise, the text will go by too fast for comfort during the transition.
3. Click the Apply to All (Slides) button.

For an even better look, you can give the impression that you created one big slide and are just pushing it to display different sections. You do this by eliminating any vertical elements on the slide and by using horizontal lines and images that appear continuous, as shown in Figure A.

 

When you show this presentation in Slide Show view, the Push Left transition will appear to shove current slide to the left to make space for the new slide, but there won’t be an obvious boundary between the slides.

This tip was contributed by Ellen Finkelstein. You can get more PowerPoint tips and tricks from her website.

Filed under: Microsoft Office Tutor