A beginner’s guide to PowerPoint’s morph transition

If you have an Office 365 subscription or PowerPoint 2019, then you’re lucky enough to have access to one of PowerPoint’s most useful and fun transitions – Morph. (If you have PowerPoint 2016 then you can view slides that have a Morph transition on them, but you can’t add a Morph transition). PowerPoint’s Morph might look like any other transition, but this feature possesses great power. We are constantly finding new ways to use PowerPoint Morph, but if you’re just getting to grips with the transition, this beginner’s guide is the perfect place to start.

Essentially, the Morph transition does some of the heavy lifting with animation for you. You can use Morph to move objects, change colors, zoom in, or all of these simultaneously (but please use your new superpowers wisely!). You can find Morph under the Transitions tab.

How to use PowerPoint Morph

Here’s how to harness your PowerPoint Morph power:

1. The Morph transition requires 2 slides with at least one object in common. So to get started, either duplicate your first slide or copy and paste the object(s) you want to Morph into the second.
2. On the second slide, select the object you wish to animate and move, resize, or recolor it.
3. Apply the Morph transition to the second slide. PowerPoint automatically knows to calculate the differences between the objects on the two slides and seamlessly animates between them.
4. Enter slideshow mode, say “It’s Morphin’ Time!” (because you’ve been waiting patiently since 1993 to use that phrase in real life), advance to the next slide, and watch in awe as Morph does what you used to spend an hour doing with motion paths. Morphing complete.

It’s also worth noting that this transition works in reverse too. So, when you click back to the previous slide, the elements animate to their original positions and sizes.

Examples

One of the best ways to use PowerPoint Morph is to animate the movement of objects without the use of motion paths. In the example below, the objects from the first slide are relocated (and some resized) on the second slide. When the Morph animation is applied, these objects will now animate smoothly between slides into their new positions in slide 2. Any other animations on the slide will begin after the transition is complete.

This effect can be viewed in slideshow mode.

Morph can also be used to create a zoom effect. Simply by enlarging and moving the globe in the example below, when Morph is applied to the second slide, it will appear that we are “zooming in” on the globe. In certain settings, this could be a great alternative to the Grow/Shrink animation.

Limitations to PowerPoint Morph

Though it’s tempting to discard everything you’ve ever known and loved about motion paths and animations, unfortunately, the Morph transition has not made you a Mighty Morphing PowerPoint Ranger just yet. Understand the feature’s limitations before you take it to the streets:

• Morph only works between slides, since it’s a transition. So, you can’t use it in exactly the same way as other animations.
• You can’t edit the paths of the objects. They take the most direct route to their destination.
• The Morph animations can’t move independently of each other or within a specified timeline, like animations can. They all move at the same time. You could get around this by spreading out the transitions over several slides, but at a certain point it will be easier to use traditional animations.
• If you’re recording narration, be aware that you can’t record during slide transitions, so you’ll have to wait until the Morph animations are complete to begin narrations.
• Your powers are too great for your friends with earlier versions of PowerPoint. The morph transitions are lost outside of PowerPoint 2016.
• Remember you need PowerPoint 2016 and a 365 subscription to use the Morph feature.

With a basic knowledge of PowerPoint Morph’s abilities and limitations, the applications of this transition are endless. So with your new Morph power, go, go PowerPoint Rangers.

If you loved that, then take a look at this….

We’ve got a whole host of super useful blog posts on creating cool effects with Morph – like a magnifying glass, a lens reveal, and using Morph with multiple objects. We also have a post on how to use PowerPoint Morph to harness the power of the Dark Side and make a Death Star!