Mask with PowerPoint: Part III

In the previous tutorial, we talk about how to make a text glow and fade off from left to right. Today, we will move on to flashing a text from left to right. By flashing, it means that lets say if you were to animate a text named "Masking", it will flash from left to right. "M" will appear first, then "a" will appear when "M" disappear, so on and so forth.

Is this hard? The answer is no. In fact, only the "Flash Once" effect is required in this scenario. The tricky part is the settings that has to be adjusted.

First of all, create a textbox and type some words in it.
Click Slide Show > Custom Animation.
Click Add Effect > Entrance > Flash Once.
Now, double click on the Flash Once effect. This will bring up the Effect Options dialog box.
Click on the Animate text dropdown field and select By letter.
Set the delay between letters to 100%.
Next, click on Timing tab.
Set the speed to 0.02 seconds. You can also adjust it according to your preference.
Click Ok and preview the animation.

Below are two ways you can try out to enhance the effect.
The first way is to add a Fade entrance effect on the text after the Flash Once effect. Then, set the start to After Previous, speed to Medium and delay to 0.2 seconds. This method will be shown on the first slide of the sample.

The second way is to make a duplicate of this textbox.
Then, remove the effect on the duplicated textbox.
Change the font color so that it is different from the original textbox.
Right click on the duplicated textbox and click Order > Send to Back.
Adjust the position of the textbox so that both the textbox will be on the same position.
Now, if you preview the animation, it should look something like this:


Figure 1: Example on the "Flash Once effect".

This method will be shown on the second slide of the sample.

Click here to download the sample now!

We are not done with it yet! Stay tuned for Part IV!