Just when I thought I had written off transitions completely as a waste of time, Microsoft PowerPoint has gone and implemented a beautiful one! It is called Morphing, a technique that lends itself well to situations where you want to include a graphic or textual idea on multiple slides in a presentation, but needs the element to be presented in different positions on the slides, or in different sizes.

Here is a quick video that demonstrates the effect:

I believe the effect is a little unfortunately named. When I first read about it, I was expecting graphic morphing something more along the lines of the Michael Jackson “Black or White” video. It is not. At all. However, this effect can be very useful. Here are some reasons I can think of that I will be using it:

• To provide continuity to a presentation by including an important graphic or text block on more than one slide
• To help audience members remember a certain graphic and illustrative point (think of key takeaways)
• To add visual interest to the presentation without being “cheesy”
• To balance the need to repeatedly show a graphic while creating room on a slide for other important text or graphics

Great, now that we have established a solid business need for this new feature, let’s break down how it is done. In general, the technique for this transition is the same as any other PowerPoint slide transition… you want to apply the transition to the slide you are moving TO.

Steps for the MS PowerPoint 2016 Morph Transition

1. Create a slide with the object you want to morph. Remember, in this context, “morph” means “smoothly animate, move and/or resize the same graphic.”
2. Create a second slide. Copy and paste the graphic from the first slide to the second. (If it is easier, you can duplicate the whole slide. But you do not have to.)
3. Move the graphic on the second slide to the new position and size you want it. You can move the graphic to a new position, resize it, and even crop it. The only rule is, it must be the exact same graphic.
4. Be sure the second slide is selected/active.
5. Click Transitions –> Morph to apply the transition.
6. Repeat for all slides where you want to include the graphic.
7. When you show the presentation (click the Slideshow icon), you should see your graphic move around and very smoothly resize, even growing/shrinking smoothly to accomodate differences in cropping AND differences in font sizes for text blocks!

A Few Tips About Morphing

1. Morphing works on graphics, but it must be the same graphic. Morphing does NOT make one graphic appear to “turn into” another graphic.
2. Morphing also works on blocks of text, as long as the text is the same. This includes changes in font size, and even the font itself!
3. If you change a block of text after you copied/pasted to another slide, you cannot “trick” PowerPoint into morphing if you change the text afterward. I tried it. The text must contain exactly the same characters to morph properly.
4. The Morph transition ONLY works for Office 365 users.

Have fun with this new feature. I am hoping to use it myself! Feel free to leave questions or other tips in the comments. I would love to hear from you.

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