Animate separate word in a paragraph - PPT 2013 (method 3)

And finally the last method.

This time I am just using an animation. More specifically an emphasis animation. It takes some effort but has the advantage that you do not need separate textboxes. This method is more difficult if you apply a gradient background to your slide. But even then you can work around it.

Select the word(s) you want to animate separately and apply the background colour of the theme. Click on the Text color button in the Font group and choose the white background 1 color box.

Result:

Now click in the textbox, choose the Animations tab, click the Add animation button, choose the Font color button in the Emphasis section. 

Double click the item in the animation task pane. Choose the list arrow next to Text color and select the black box. 

Next to Animate text choose By word and lower the percentage to 5%. On the Timing tab next to duration choose 3 seconds (slow).

Click during the presentation and the words will appear one by one with a suitable delay between them. There is no obligation to animate word by word but if you do not all words will appear simultaneously and very quickly.

If you want the words to vanish after being animated, just click the box Rewind when done playing on the Timing tab of the dialog.

What if you choose a colored gradient background, e.g. from one of the in-built themes?

In the example below I have used the Slice theme.

Select the word(s) you want to animate separately and click the Format tab under Drawing tools. Click on the Text fill button in the WordArt styles group and finally select Eyedropper.

Move the eyedropper next to or close to the animated word and click. The color now follows the background.

Repeat the process for the other words. Finally apply the animation discussed above. The colors you choose using the eyedropper will be available under the recent category.

Animate separate word in a paragraph in PPT 2013 (method 2)

In my previous article I used white space and a separate textbox to animate a single word in a paragraph.

Let's try a different approach.

Format the word you want to animate to be 100% transparent (1)
Select the word, right click it and choose Format shape. In the task pane click Text options and use the slider next to Transparency, slide till you reach 100 %.

As you can see the selected word is still in place.

Copy the entire text box and make it 100 % transparent (2). Now select only the animated word and set it back to 0% (3)

As a last step align the two text boxes on top of each other. To do so use the alignment tools on the Format tab of the contextual tab Drawing tools.

Now animate the second text box and you are done.

Animate separate word in a paragraph in PPT 2013 (method 1)

In PowerPoint you can only animate full text paragraphs. Animate all the words one by one consecutively is no problem. But animate a single word within a paragraph is not possible. There are some workarounds though you can try.

The first one is to leave a gap between two words in the paragraph and add a separate textbox on top of the gap. This requires some aligning to get the textbox where you want it. To create the gap you could use spaces but with proportional fonts this is not the way to go. Instead use a tab stop.
Here is a sample, I put the word(s) to be animated in red so you can see clearly.

There is a tab stop just before the next word in the sentence  (1). Once you done that you can remove the word  by cutting it (2) and press the tab key (3).

Now paste the word you cut outside the active text box. Drag it to the right spot. To have more precision hold the Alt-key while dragging.

Move the textbox to the exact position

As a last step, animate the separate text box anyway you want. Next time I will show you an alternative option.