Struggling with Appear/Disappear Effects

Question

I've been transitioning to Keynote from PowerPoint for a while now, but so far have only tested the Keynote waters with simple presentations. Now I'm moving up to something fairly complex, something I could do easily in PowerPoint and can't quite get in Keynote.
The short of it is I have a list of names. I want the names to fade in and out, but not just one at a time. One will come in, there's a pause, and then the next appears. Then as the third comes in the first disappears. As the fourth appears, the second disappears. And so on.
Without going into more detail or using this list as a classroom, is anyone willing off-line to walk me through this? You'd be doing a great service in freeing me from another Microsoft application!

Answer 1

Hi,
1. Place all of the names (as text or graphics) on the slide.
2. Click on the Build Inspector icon in the main Inspector window.
3. Select the objects you want to animate on the slide and, under the Build In "tab" on the Build Inspector, choose an animation style from the drop down menu (for example, choose dissolve). You don't necessarily have to do them all at once but it's faster to just assign everything you want to animate with a "Build In" so you can start timing every item and getting them 'in' the build sequence.
4. Click on the "More Options" button at the bottom of the Build Inspector window - the drawer will slide out to one side or the other. Here you can see everything that you've assigned a build for that slide. It also shows the order of things that are being animated from first to last beginning at the top of the list.
5. Click on the object you want to animate first and you'll notice it will be highlighted in the Build Inspector's drawer. You can now see the relationship between the objects on the slide and their animation order in the drawer. Simply reorder the items in the drawer's build list to what you need (name 1 is at the top followed by name 2 then 3 and so on).
6. Now that you've got your "In" builds arranged, it's time to get the first one to fade away when you want it to. Click on the first name you'd want to disappear in the Build Inspector's drawer list.
7. Click on the "Build Out" tab in the Build Inspector. Pick an animation style (ie dissolve) and it will add the Build Out to the bottom of the drawer list. Notice that both the IN and OUT builds for that object are highlighted.
8. Because my writeup here only has 3 text objects, the OUT build will be at the bottom and I don't have to move it but if you have more than what I'm demoing, that's how you'd move it around. Click in the empty space in the Build Inspector's list area to deselect everything and then click once on the OUT build for that object. Now you can move it wherever you want it in the sequence.
As for having things pause between individual builds, you can either give each object's build in stage to begin "On Click" or "Automatically after/with prior build" using the drop down menu at the bottom of the Build Inspector's drawer. If you want to do the "automatically after/with" option, you can set thet Delay time there as well. I've found that this time varies slightly depending on how fast your machine is and what else is running on the slide.
Hope this helps you get started,
Matt
I've been transitioning to Keynote from PowerPoint
for a while now, but so far have only tested the
Keynote waters with simple presentations. Now I'm
moving up to something fairly complex, something I
could do easily in PowerPoint and can't quite get in
Keynote.
The short of it is I have a list of names. I want
the names to fade in and out, but not just one at a
time. One will come in, there's a pause, and then
the next appears. Then as the third comes in the
first disappears. As the fourth appears, the second
disappears. And so on.
Without going into more detail or using this list as
a classroom, is anyone willing off-line to walk me
through this? You'd be doing a great service in
freeing me from another Microsoft application!