How to Animate Single Words or Letters in Microsoft PowerPoint

Animations in PowerPoint presentations can help emphasize key points, make content more memorable, and add visual interest. While it’s easy to apply basic animations to entire text boxes or objects, you can also animate single words or even individual letters for greater impact.

Why Animate Single Words or Letters

Animating a single word or letter is an effective way to:

• Draw attention to an important term, name, date, etc.
• Reinforce or introduce key vocabulary words
• Highlight a critical piece of information
• Add energy and interest to text-heavy slides

For example, you might animate the letters spelling out a new product name one by one, or have a key term fly in from off screen to grab the audience’s focus. Used judiciously, per-word and per-letter animations can make your presentation more dynamic.

Animate Entire Text Selections

Before diving into single word/letter animations, it helps to understand how to animate entire text selections in PowerPoint first:

1. Select the text box or paragraph you want to animate
2. Go to the Animations tab and pick an animation like Appear, Fly In, Wipe, etc.
3. Tweak the effect settings like direction, speed, delay, etc. in the popup box
4. Preview the animation

This will animate all the text simultaneously. Now let’s look at doing words or letters individually.

Animate Single Words in a Text Box

1. Select the text box and add your animation as above
2. Open the Animation Pane sidebar
3. Click the down arrow next to the animation and choose Effect Options
4. Go to the Effect tab and next to Animate Text select By Word
5. Adjust the Delay between words appearing
6. Click OK, then preview the slide

The words will now animate in one by one. You can delete or customize word animations in the Animation Pane.

Animate Single Letters

To animate text letter by letter:

1. Follow the steps above to animate words
2. In the Effect Options popup, choose By Letter next to Animate Text
3. Adjust the letter delay time as desired
4. Select OK and preview the slideshow

You can now watch each letter pop onto the slide individually for a dramatic typography effect. Tweak the order or timing of word/letter animations in the Animation Pane.

Tips for Single Word & Letter Animations

• Use sparingly, only for key terms or critical data
• Keep letter delay consistent for smooth reading
• Experiment with entrance animations beyond basic Appear
• Insert pauses after animated words/phrases
• Try exiting animations too like Fly Out
• For names, animate last name first

Animate Images/Objects By Letter

You can also simulate per-letter animations for images, shapes and other objects:

1. Type out the word using a text box, animating by letter
2. Convert the text to individual objects (right click > Break Apart)
3. Style each letter object as desired
4. Copy the text box letter animations over to the object letters (Animation Painter)
5. Align the object letters into position

This takes more work but opens up additional design options.

Conclusion

Animating single words and letters may take a few extra clicks initially, but the impact is worth it. When applied judiciously to highlight key terms and data, per-word and per-letter animations can make your presentation more dynamic, memorable and impactful.

Give it a try on your next PowerPoint deck! Start slow by animating just one or two critical words per slide, and build up from there as you get comfortable with the process. For more advanced animations, check out our guides on motion paths and animation triggers.