Loops are like buses. You wait ages for one then a bunch of them arrive at the same time! In our last looping article you discovered how to create infinite Motion Paths in PowerPoint. Now you’re going to learn a simple technique to loop sequences of animations in PowerPoint.
Animation effects in presentations aren’t just decorative, they’re a great way to pace your content so you can explain your story step-by-step. We’ve got lots of articles about how to use simple animations effectively (like this beginner’s guide to Morph and this introduction to PowerPoint animation), but today we’re going to look at something a little more sophisticated. Sometimes you might want to play a sequence of animation effects in a loop, over and over again to illustrate a particular point. PowerPoint allows you to loop a single animation effect but not a sequence of multiple effects. Our neat hack solves that limitation and, as an added bonus, gives you a warm fuzzy sensation because you know loops inside out.
Let’s start at the very beginning as I’ve heard it’s a very good place to start! If you’re sitting there thinking, ‘Hang on a second, I have no idea how to loop a single animation!’ – fear not! Take a look at the slide below. Let’s say you wanted the computer icon in column E to blink repeatedly until you move to the next slide.
To do this you would add the Blink emphasis effect from the Animations tab (Animations > Add Animation > More Emphasis effects…). Then open the Animation Pane, right click on the blink animation you just added and select Effect Options. Then set up the animation as follows:
Okay, one animation successfully looped! But what would you do if you wanted a sequence of animation affects to play in a specified order and then repeat, as in this example:
This is just one PowerPoint slide with a fairly complex animation sequence used to show the production line process. This is what the Animation Pane looks like:
You can download this file to see how the animation sequence was created: Download looping animation file. What we want to do now is to set this whole sequence to repeat until the next slide. How? With our audio bookmark hack!
Hover your mouse over the last animation effect in the sequence and make a note of the time it ends. In our example, it’s 13.5 seconds.
Record a sound file that’s a bit longer than the time you just noted down. This may seem odd but stick with it! To do this, go to the Insert tab in PowerPoint and – way over on the right-hand side of the ribbon – click Audio followed by Record Audio.
Top tip: Name your recording using the target time so you remember when to stop recording!
If you want, you can mute your microphone. Otherwise, keep completely silent and press the record button. Wait until the recording is the right length, then press the stop button.
Wait! Hold the phone. Why are we telling you to record a silent audio file?! All will become clear.
Select your new audio file then set it up in the Playback tab as follows:
Your audio file options should now look like this:
Finally, click the Trim Audio button and set the End Time to the exact time you want the animation sequence to repeat. In our example, the sequence lasts 13.5 seconds so we’ll set the audio end time to 14.00 seconds.
Note: in some versions of PowerPoint this may cause an auto transition to be added to the slide. Check in the Transitions tab and deselect this check box if that happens:
Open the Animation Pane (download our free quick access toolbar customisation for Windows or macOS to open the Animation Pane with just one click). Then select the first animation effect in the sequence, hold down the shift key and select the last effect in the sequence. With the whole sequence selected, go back to the Animations tab and in the Advanced Animation group, click the Trigger menu followed by On Bookmark and then Bookmark 1.
And you’re done! You should now see two zones in the Animation Pane. The top part in the main timeline sequence just has the audio file in it, set to start automatically and repeatedly fire its single bookmark trigger event every 14 seconds. The main animation sequence has moved to what’s known as the interactive or trigger sequence. This sequence will now start every time the bookmark in the audio file is reached.
And as the audio file is set to loop until you advance the slide, the animation sequence will repeat from when you start the Slide Show until you move to the next slide or quit the show. And it doesn’t stop there. Imagine what effects you could achieve by adding different sequences to different audio files with multiple bookmarks. One audio file triggering another that triggers a sequence of effects that triggers another audio file. Welcome to mind-blowing PowerPoint that makes your brain ache and your heart sing! No? Just us then!
If you’re now looping mad, then you might want to check out this blog post: How to create infinite Motion Paths in PowerPoint. And our free BrightSlide add-in for PowerPoint includes lots of new ways to enhance your creativity, including some very cool animation tools that’ll have your boss, colleagues and audiences jumping for joy. Download BrightSlide!
Leave a commentWe love PowerPoint at BrightCarbon. It’s such a versatile application which can be used for so much more than ‘just’ designing presentations. You can create videos, printed collateral, interactive eLearning, even animated GIFs and so much more. But did you know you can even create games? We’ve built one for you, using VBA, and it’s free to download and adapt.
If you’ve used BrightCarbon’s guides before, we have no doubt that you can make your content look incredible. But something you might not have dabbled in yet is changing up the slide background in PowerPoint. The right presentation backdrop can do a lot, from keeping everything on brand to adding…
All the best things in life do loop-the-loops. Rollercoasters, fancy planes, and… PowerPoint! Learn how to make a loop-the-loop-ing infinite Motion Path in PowerPoint for silky smooth repeating image carousels, never-ending animations, and more!
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Tell me more!I wanted to make sure I send you both a HUGE thank you for making this story come to life and creating amazing graphics to help. We really appreciate BrightCarbon for stepping up our presentation game massively!
Sarah Walker Softchoice
Absolutely brilliant! Thank you for sharing
Thank you very much, It’s very useful.
Very useful. Worked like a charm
Thank you so much for sharing this knowledge!
Brilliant! Thank you so much
Thank you – works like a charm. I would never have thought that I’ve have to record an audio to make a animation loop!
Great idea!
had to repeat list of animations on a slide – this works perfect! Thanks much for sharing
It doesn’t loop. It just plays once even though I have “loop until stopped selected”. I applied all the steps you suggested. What am I doing wrong?
I’m having the same problem! I’ve followed this guide a few times with no problems but this time I just can’t get it to work.
The most bizarre thing is that a previous slideshow I did still works perfectly and I’ve compared all the settings and all the checkboxes and they all match. But the new slideshows just repeat once and stop. Very annoying. I suspect there’s been an ‘improvement’ by Microsoft – that’s normally what breaks useful things in the office apps!
It seems that in current versions of Office 365 there is a strange bug. I just ran into the same problem, but I figured out its cause and a solution. Here’s how:
Apparently, PowerPoint adds a slide transition timer when you add the audio. It is set so the exact duration of the audio. So when the loop is ready to repeat the transition kicks in and switches to the next slide.
To solve it just go to the Transitions tab and clear the check box next to the slide timer (usually the last item on the ribbon).
Works perfectly! I looked for this option for a while and finally learned how to do it.
It is explained easily step by step.
Thank you!
Thank you so much.
Where in the heck is the Playback tab? I recorded the video but it’s nowhere to be seen. Clicking it in the Animation pane just brings up Animation options. Why do these articles skimp on screenshots? Be better for us dumb ones.
Found it–have to select the “recording” icon dead center in the slide. Missed it because I had assets masking it. Seriously–screenshots are signposts for your readers. Shouldn’t have to explain that for technical content.
Thanks for the feedback JD. Which step(s) do you believe requires additional screenshot(s)?
All the options I need to do this are greyed out. How do I make them so I can actually click on them?
Really appreciated the effort to put this tip up, and also for the correction on comments on how to fix on Office 365 – just made it work on 7th July 2024 after removing the auto-transiction!
works like a charm! thank you for explaining so clearly
Thank you everyone for the feedback. It appears that there may be a Microsoft regression bug in the way that audio files set to loop until end of slide behave (irrespective of the slide transition setting). We’ve reported this to Microsoft.
Just tried this out and it works very nicely, it was very frustrating not being able to loop my animation flow. Thank you very much for taking the time to post this, itbhelped very much!
I still think, PP should be able to do this out-of-the-box, but this is a workaround I can live with.
Thanks for this! Very helpful!
Thanks for this tip. I found it somewhere else as well, but kept coming back to yours because this is where it was explained the best.
I am wondering if there is a way to pause the animation once the loop has started… I initially looked at how to pause the sound file, but a. I did not find out to do it and b. it should not do anything to the animation (unless there is 1 bookmark every second or so and each bookmark triggers a different section of the animation… Tricky to sync, I guess).
Anyway, any chance you figured out how to pause a 40-ish secs animation that loops thanks to your trick?