I was working on a PowerPoint presentation that included screenshots that were using the Appear animation. I use it to only show a particular screenshot when I am actually talking about it.

However when editing the slide, the screenshots hide the slide text which makes it difficult to edit it.

And in the Animation Pane the pictures are shown as Picture1, Picture2 etc.

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So I wanted two things;

  1. Rename the object to a more meaningfull name in the Animation Pane
  2. Hide the screenshots when I want to edit the text in the slide.

 

And luckily this is possible in PowerPoint using the Selection and Visibility task pane.

To open the Selection and Visibility pane, on the Home tab, in the Editing group, click Select, and then click Selection Pane:

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In the Selection and Visibility pane you can doubleclick on an object to rename it:

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And if the object has an animation, like Appear of Fade an extra “Eye” button appears:

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If you click on the Eye you hide the object and you easily edit the objects below, you do need to make it visible again when you’re done though or it won’t be shown in the slideshow at all.