This feature is only available in PPT 2002 (aka PPT XP)

Grow/Shrink is a cool little tool, but I admit it threw me the first time I saw it in the beta version of PPT 2002. Especially when I tried to shrink something I’d just grown. (Dirty minds outta the gutters, please.)

To add a grow/shrink effect to your animation, right-click the object and select Custom Animation (just as you’re used to from previous versions.) The animation taskpane will pop up on the right.

Step 1: Add Effect–>Emphasis–>Grow/Shrink

Step 2: In the Effect Options box, choose your weapon. I chose to grow a picture to 150% of its original size.

Step 3: Notice there’s an “auto reverse” button over on the left. Pretty darn nifty, that. This will grow your picture, textbox, whatever, then turn right around and reverse the effect, taking the object back to the size you started with. Using this in conjunction with the settings on the timings tab will get you where you want to be 99% of the time.

This is for that other 1% of the time when auto reverse won’t work for what you want.

Step 3a: Select the object that has the “grow” effect applied.

Step 3b: Repeat Step 1: Add Effect–>Emphasis–>Grow/Shrink and go to the Effect Options box as in Step 2.

Step 3c: This time in Effect Options, you need to fill in the “custom” box with the appropriate percentage to take your object back to 100%.(Remember not believing that algebra could be used in the “real world”? Well, welcome to your very own real world story problem. Whaddaya mean you can’t solve for X?! <g>)

Use this formula: (Target % / Grown %) X 100=PUT THIS % IN THE BOX.

For example, in this illustration, we grew our object to 150%, now we want to take it back to 100%. 100/150=.667And of course, .667X100=66.7%. Put 66.7% in the Custom box in the Grow/Shrink dialog.

Here are a couple of other examples:

1. Object was grown to 250% Use 40% to get it back to 100% (100/250=.40)

2. Object was grown to 400% Use 25% to get it back to 100% (100/400=.25)

3. Object was grown to 200% Use 75% to take it to 150% (or 1.5 times) its original size (150/200=.75)

4. Object was grown to 400% Use 50% to take it to 200% (or twice) its original size (200/400=.50)