How to add a flashing star to a PowerPoint slide

To add a little fun to a Microsoft PowerPoint slide, combine a few animations to a star shape to create a flashing star.

You’ve probably seen the gum commercial in which teeth are so shiny that they flash stars when the person smiles. It’s a fun effect, and you create it in Microsoft PowerPoint using a few timed animations with one star shape. Once you add a star, you might want to add more—although, one is certainly enough. More stars just add to the fun. In this article, I’ll show you how to add one star that hangs around for a second or two and then disappears. In a future article, I’ll show you how to add several flashing stars.

SEE: Office 365: A guide for tech and business leaders (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

I’m using Microsoft 365 on a Windows 10 64-bit system. I recommend that you hold off on upgrading to Windows 11 until all the kinks are worked out. For your convenience, you can download the .pptx and .ppt demonstration files. This article isn’t appropriate for the web.

Gather the pieces

To avoid copyright infringement, we’ll use an illustration from Microsoft 365’s Picture option. Then, we’ll insert a four-pointed star. That’s all you’ll need. Using Figure A as a guide, download that toothy unicorn into a blank slide:

1. Click the Insert tab, click Pictures in the Images group, and choose Stock Images from the dropdown.
2. In the resulting dialog, click Stickers in the menu, and then enter the search term, smile.
3. Click the unicorn (Figure B) and then click Insert to insert the sticker into the blank slide.
4. The background is dark blue so you can see the star animations easier. It isn’t necessary that you take this stuff, but if you want to, right-click the background of the slide and choose Format Background. In the Format Background pane, choose a dark contrasting color from the Color dropdown.

Figure A

Figure B

Next, insert the four-point star as follows:

1. On the Insert tab, click Shapes in the Illustrations group.
2. From the Stars and Banners section, click the four-point star.
3. Click inside the slide and drag to size. Drag to position the star partially over the teeth (Figure A). Use the rotation handle to turn the star a bit to the left or the right to give it a bit of character.
4. With the star selected, click the contextual Shape Format tab.
5. From the Shape Fill (in the Shape Styles group) dropdown, choose white.
6. From the Shape Outline dropdown, choose a bright orange that looks a bit like gold.
7. With a dark background, you don’t need the outline—you can try it both ways and see which you prefer. From the Shape Outline dropdown, choose Weight and then 2 ¼ pt (Figure C).

Figure C

Once you have the two pieces in order, you can add the animations. We’ll add three timed animations to the star.

How to animate the star in your PowerPoint slide

We want the star to appear, seem to grow and change colors a bit and then disappear with a bit of flare. We can complete this with three timed animations, all to the star. The animation timings will control when and how the three animations appear and disappear.

To add the first animation, the one that displays the star, do the following:

1. Click the Animations tab and choose Appear from the Animation gallery in the Animation group. You may need to click the More button and choose it from the Entrance section.
2. In the Timing group, choose With Previous from the Start dropdown. Enter .50 as the Duration setting. Enter 00 as the Delay setting.

These settings set a one-second delay from the time you show the slide before the star appears. In addition, PowerPoint takes nearly a full second to display the full star. This part of the animation is flexible because you can change the timing to fit into your dialogue. You might increase the delay or change With Previous to On Click so the animation starts immediately.

The second animation displays a slight pulse and changes the star’s color. Let’s add that next:

1. With the star still selected, click the Add Animation dropdown in the Advanced Animation and choose Color Pulse in the Emphasis group.
2. From the Effect Options dropdown (in the Animation group), choose orange—again, one that looks like gold. Now, the star will pulse a bit between white and “gold.”
3. In the Timing group, choose After Previous from the Start dropdown.
4. Enter 50 as the Duration setting.
5. Enter 00 as the Delay setting (if necessary).

This animation will start after the entrance effect (above) is complete. Over almost two seconds, the star will pulse and change colors between white and orange.

We have one last animation to add—one that removes the star:

1. With the star still selected, click the Add Animation option and choose Shrink & Turn from the Exit section.
2. In the Timing group, choose After Previous from the Start dropdown.
3. Enter .50 as the Duration setting and 00 as the Delay setting, if necessary.

Although, you can’t see the full effect of all three animations in a still figure, Figure D shows a few stills so you can get the idea of what you should see when you click F5 to see the show.

Figure D

Most of the time settings are slow, which I did on purpose so you could easily see all the transitions. When applying this to your own slide, you can speed things up or slow things down, or you could even use a different star.

Stay tuned

This fun animation is simple and flexible. In a future article, I’ll show you how to add several stars, flashing randomly.