KB0022: Can I animate think-cell charts in PowerPoint?

Answer

think-cell has no built-in support for animation. A simple workaround is to place a white rectangle on top of the chart and fade it out/in to make the chart appear/disappear. If you want the series (or other parts) of the chart to appear one after another you can temporarily deactivate think-cell, use PowerPoint to animate the chart and then reactivate think-cell. The animation will still work after reactivating think-cell. This is explained below.

Most think-cell charts consist of a basic MS Graph chart plus additional PowerPoint labels. The basic approach is to animate the MS Graph chart (this can be done, e.g., by series), animate the PowerPoint labels individually, and at the end arrange the order of appearance of all parts as desired.

Warning: When you modify the chart, e.g., by modifying the data or adding rows or columns, the animation may break.

The following example shows how to animate a stacked chart so that the series appear one after another. You can download a sample file for Office 2007 here.

Office 2003 and 2007

  1. Create a Stacked Chart with think-cell.
  2. Deactivate think-cell by going to the think-cell toolbar and clicking on More → Deactivate think-cell.
  3. Animate the basic MS Graph chart:
    1. Display the custom animation pane.
      Office 2003: right-click on the MSGraph chart → Custom Animation
      Office 2007: click on Animations → Animations → Custom Animation in the ribbon.
    2. Select the basic MS Graph chart and in the animation pane choose Add Effect → Entrance → Appear.
    3. To make the series appear one after another, right-click on the entry in the animation pane and choose Effect options → Chart Animation → Group Chart: By series. Untick Animate grid and legend, confirm with OK.
    4. To show the individual series of the MS Graph chart in the animation pane, click on the little downward-pointing double arrow think-cell license key dialog just below the chart entry. Now the pane shows an entry for each series.
  4. Animate the PowerPoint labels:
    1. Select the series labels and (if selectable) the segment labels that belong to the first series. Click on Add Effect → Entrance → Appear.
    2. Repeat step a) for all data series.
    3. Repeat step a) for the total labels.
  5. Put all animation entries in the correct order of appearance, i.e., the labels of the first series should appear when the first series is displayed.
    1. Select the entries for the series and segment labels that belong to the first series and move them just below the first chart series.
    2. Right-click on the first entry you just moved and change from Start On Click to Start With Previous. Now the labels of the first series will appear together with their MSGraph series. All the labels of series 1 now show an animation tag 1 as can be seen in the screenshot.
    3. Put all PowerPoint labels just after there corresponding series by repeating above steps.
    4. Leave the total labels as last entry in the animation list to make them appear with the last series.

The screenshot below shows the chart after performing these steps:

PowerPoint screenshot animated stacked chart

Office 2010

Due to a bug in Office 2010, it is not possible to animate charts by series in pptx-files in Office 2010. It is possible to animate a chart initially, but closing and reopening the presentation corrupts the animation. If you contact Microsoft Office Support and ask for a fix, refer to Microsoft case number REG:111012160098867.

A workaround for this bug is to save the presentation as a ppt-file. However, it is discouraged by Microsoft to still use the ppt-format, which does not support all features of Office 2007 and 2010.

  1. Save your current presentation as a ppt-file.
  2. Create a Stacked Chart with think-cell.
  3. Deactivate think-cell by going to the think-cell toolbar and clicking on More → Deactivate think-cell.
  4. Animate the basic MS Graph chart:
    1. Click on the ribbon tab Animations.
    2. Select the basic MS Graph chart and click Animation → Appear.
    3. To show the animation pane, click on Advanced Animation → Animation Pane.
    4. To make the series appear one after another, right-click on the entry in the animation pane and choose Effect options → Chart Animation → Group Chart: By series. Untick Animate grid and legend, confirm with OK.
    5. To show the individual series of the MS Graph chart in the animation pane, click on the little downward-pointing double arrow think-cell license key dialog just below the chart entry. Now the pane shows an entry for each series.
  5. Animate the PowerPoint labels:
    1. Select the series labels and (if selectable) the segment labels that belong to the first series. Click on Animation → Appear.
    2. Repeat step a) for all data series.
    3. Repeat step a) for the total labels.
  6. Put all animation entries in the correct order of appearance, i.e., the labels of the first series should appear when the first series is displayed.
    1. Select the entries for the series and segment labels that belong to the first series and move them just below the first chart series.
    2. Right-click on the first entry you just moved and change from Start On Click to Start With Previous. Now the labels of the first series will appear together with their MSGraph series. All the labels of series 1 now show an animation tag 1 as can be seen in the screenshot.
    3. Put all PowerPoint labels just after there corresponding series by repeating above steps.
    4. Leave the total labels as last entry in the animation list. Make them appear with the last series.