I hear you've gotten involved in special effects. Tell us about that...

Will do. Let's say you're doing a slide show. Everyone expects one slide to just click to another. But with my transition effect, you can make slides dissolve into one another. It looks very high tech.

That, my friend, is cool.

And I do all my own stunts, by the way.

Adding a Transition A transition is a special effect used to introduce a slide during a slide show. The following steps will show you how to add a transition to a slide. 1. In Slide Sorter View, click the slide you want to add the transition to. 2. Click the Slide Show menu, then click Slide Transition. A Slide Transition dialog box will appear. 3. In the Effect list box, click Checkerboard Across. 4. Click the Medium option button to select a speed for the transition. 5. Click the Apply button. A slide transition icon appears under the slide's left corner, indicating that the transition has been applied. If you want the same transition to apply to all the slides in your presentation, click the Apply to All button in the Slide Transition dialog box.

Those transitions are absolutely zany, edge-of-your-seat excitement. I bet Spielberg is scratching his head on how you pulled that off.

Well, a lot of it is practice. Plus, I check to make sure the transition effect worked. Here's how...

Checking a transition In Slide Sorter View, click the slide transition icon. The transition effect you applied should be displayed.

Well, those transitions are pretty neat. With all the things you've invented, one day they may even invent a slide show that runs by itself! Ha ha ha.

They have. That's one of my abilities.

That's impossible. I was making a joke.

Let's say you're doing a presentation on "Coordination". With an automatic slideshow, you can speak the presentation, have your slides advance automatically, and leave your hands free for juggling, for example. It's very handy. Pun intended.

Timing a transition If you want your slide show to run automatically, you must add timing to the slides. When you add timing to a slide, you specify the number of seconds to remain on each slide. Here's how you add timing to your slides: 1. Select the slide you want to add a timing to by clicking it. 2. In Slide Sorter View, click the Slide Show menu, and then click Slide Transition. The Slide Transition dialog box will appear. 3. Under Advance, click the check box next to Automatically After. 4. In the seconds box, type the number of seconds to remain on the slide. For example, 5 seconds. 5. Click the Apply button. When you run your slide show, the slide that you have applied the timing to will only remain on screen for five seconds.