Here’s a Cool Way to Animate Your Slide’s Background in PowerPoint

Animating a slide's background in PowerPoint is easier than you think it is.

I mean it.

You can have an animated background in five minutes flat. All it takes is to know what to look out for, what settings to use, and how you position all the different components in the slide.

So, in this tutorial, I'm going to show you how to animate your slide's background. For this example, I'm going for those summer vibes and will be playing around with a pool of water.

VIDEO TUTORIAL

Animate Your PowerPoint Slide's Background

Here's A Rundown Of The Steps

1. Grab a video

Go ahead and grab any video that you think would be perfect for your background. Just be sure it's one that's in a high resolution format.

Also, depending on where you get your video from, just be sure you follow any licensing terms that come with one you've chosen.

Golden Tip: If you're looking for a free resource for high quality stock videos, then check out Pixabay. They have awesome videos, all for free, and with generous licensing conditions.

HEADS UP: Keep in mind that adding a video to your PowerPoint deck will increase the file's size. So pick your videos with caution.

2. Create a foreground

Use PowerPoint's shapes, text boxes and their Merge Shapes functions to create your very own foreground.

If you're lost and have no idea where to start, be sure to check out the video - I'll reveal how I did everything step-by-step, and you can take it from there.

Just remember: your foreground has to be one shape. Again, the video will go over that in a little more detail.

3. Tune the video's settings

Okay, so you have a foreground, and you have your video.

Now what?

Well, we're going to have to tweak the video's playback settings.

Here's the thing: The default video playback settings for PowerPoint don't exactly allow you to 'wow' your audience.

When you launch your presentation in Slide Show view, the default option is to have the video play in the background only if you initiate the sequence (e.g. hit the space bar, use the clicker, or whatever).

Also, once the video is played and has run its course, it just stops playing. And that's kind of awkward when we're looking for an effect that dazzles.

This means that we're going to tweak just a few settings and automate the video to play the second the slide comes up in Slide Show view, and make sure the video keeps playing even if it's done.

So here's what you'll need to do:

  • Click on your video
  • Under the Video Tools tab, go to Playback
  • In the Video Options section, change the Start feature to "Automatically"
  • In the Video Options section, make sure you check "Loop until Stopped"

That's it. You're done!

4. Position your background video and foreground

This is fairly straight forward, but hey, this is a comprehensive tutorial for a reason.

Right click your video and send it back, and make sure your foreground is placed directly in front of it.

Now, sit back and watch the magic happen when you hit the Slide Show button.

And We're Done!

All we did was take a video, made a few shapes, tweaked a few settings and moved things around for an awesome effect that your audience is going to love.

If you use this technique at a presentation, let us know! We'd love to hear about it.

Yousef "Yoyo" Abu Ghaidah

Yousef "Yoyo" Abu Ghaidah

Yousef "Yoyo" Abu Ghaidah is a PowerPoint ninja that founded Slide Cow, a learning platform for all things PowerPoint, presentations and public speaking. When he's not designing slides or giving presentations, he's on another coffee run.
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