How to flip content for fun transitions in Microsoft PowerPoint

When the subject warrants a little fun or surprise, try flipping pictures and text with transitions in Microsoft PowerPoint.

Flipping pictures and text offers a quick way to add a little fun to a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation. You can use a little flipped image or text to suggest a bit of fun or surprise. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to flip pictures and text using Microsoft PowerPoint transitions.

I’m using Microsoft 365 on a Windows 10 64-bit system, but you can use older versions. The Morph transition is available through Microsoft 365, PowerPoint 2019 and PowerPoint for the web. Rotating and the Flip transition have been around longer.

How to flip slides vertically using Morph in PowerPoint

Flipping a slide vertically turns the slide upside down. With two slides — one upright and one upside down, you can add the Morph transition and you’ve got an easy but cool statement.

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If you’re not familiar with the Morph transition, don’t worry. It’s easy to implement. Create two or more slides, select both or all of the slides and apply the Morph transition. PowerPoint will move from one slide to another, changing the content at will. The one disadvantage is that you can’t control that transition, but most of the time PowerPoint does a great job.

Figure A shows a picture of a steer, which comprises the entire slide. This slide is from the stock images selection so there’s no copyright issues, but you can use any picture you like. Simply click the Insert tab, choose Pictures, Stock Images and insert a picture.

Figure A

To flip the picture, do the following:

1. Duplicate the first slide by right-clicking it in the Slides pane and choosing Duplicate Slide.
2. Select the picture on the duplicate slide and click the Picture Format tab.
3. In the Arrange group, click Rotate Objects.
4. In the resulting dropdown, choose Flip Vertical.

At this point, you have two slides. The first is right-side up and the second is upside down. To apply the Morph transition, select them both in the Slide Panes. Click the first slide, hold down the Shift key and click the second.

With both slides selected, click the Transitions tab and then click Morph in the Transitions gallery. With both slides still selected, click the Effects Options dropdown to the right and choose Objects, as shown in Figure B.

Figure B

To run the show, press F5 or click Slide Show at the bottom of the screen. PowerPoint seems to recognize that the second picture is upside down and adds an appropriate transition — the picture seems to flip on its own.

You can create a similar transition of the slide flipping horizontally by choosing that option in Step 4 above. With the steer picture, the change isn’t obvious although you can see that the livestock tag changes sides.

How to flip a slide for a mirror image in PowerPoint

In the last section, we flipped a picture vertically to achieve what some might call a mirror image. It won’t work with text though. The quickest way to achieve a mirror image with text is to cheat.

Instead of using PowerPoint’s rotation options, which won’t work as expected, use your favorite screenshot software to shoot an image of the text or use PowerPoint’s Screenshot in the Images group.

For our example, take a screenshot of the text shown in Figure C. Before doing so, click the View tab and uncheck the Gridlines and Guides option in the Show group. When taking the shot, try to avoid getting any border lines of the slide. If necessary, you can crop them out. Save the shot to the local system.

Figure C

Add a new slide, click the Insert tab and use the Pictures option to insert the screenshot you just saved locally. With the picture of the text in a slide, you can now flip it horizontally for the desired effect, as shown in Figure D. Switch positions of the two text slides. You want the flipped slide before the normal slide.

Figure D

There are two fun transitions for mirror-image text. First, apply the Wipe transition to the second slide. You’ll find it in the Transition gallery. The transition appears to flow backward — it reminds me a bit of falling dominos as PowerPoint moves from the first slide to the second.

Next, select the second text slide and remove the Wipe animation by choosing None in the Transition gallery. Then, apply the Flip transition. They are both fun when working with mirror-image text.

In both cases, apply the transition to the second slide and then start the show from the first text slide. I prefer the Wipe transition but they’re both fun.

Whether you call it flipping or inverting, you can use these transitions to create some fun transitions using Microsoft PowerPoint.