The Problem (Q-score 12, ranked #56th of 95 in the VBA Core archive)
The scenario as originally posted in 2012
PowerPoint entrance animation set up with “Start: With Previous” starts right when a new slide is advanced. However, if you set up an exit animation in the same way, it doesn’t start with a slide ending sequence. Instead, the “Start: On Click” trigger needs to be used and after your exit animation is over you still need one extra click just to advance to the next slide.
Workarounds to this are obvious: create a duplicate slide, make your ending animations from the original slide being your starting animations on the duplicate slide and let them be followed with whatever you want or create a transition slide with those ending animations only and set up “Change Advance slide -> Automatically after -> [the time it takes your animations to finish]”.
These workarounds will make it work for your audience, visually. However, it has an impact on slide numbers you might need to adjust accordingly and/or duplicate content changes. If you are the only one creating and using your presentation, this might be just fine. But if you are creating a presentation in collaborative mode with three other people and don’t even know who will be the presenter at the end, you can mess things up.
Let’s be specific: most of my slides have 0.2s fly in entrance animation applied to blocks of content coming from right, bottom or left. Advancing to the next slide I want them to fly out in another 0.2s exit animation being followed by new slide 0.2s fly in entrance animation of the new blocks. The swapping of the blocks should be triggered while advancing to the next slide, as usually.
As mentioned, I’m not able to achieve this without one extra click between the slides.
I wrote a VBA script that should start together with an exit animation and will auto advance a slide after 0.3s when the exit animation is over. That way I should get rid of those extra clicks which are needed right now.
Sub nextslide()
iTime = 0.3
Start = Timer
While Timer < Start + iTime
DoEvents
Wend
With SlideShowWindows(1).View
.GotoSlide (ActivePresentation.SlideShowWindow.View.Slide.SlideIndex + 1)
End With
End Sub
It works well when binded on a box, button or another object. But I can’t make it run on a single click (anywhere on the slide) so that it could start together with the exit animation onclick trigger. Creating a big transparent rectangular shape over the whole slide and binding the macro on it doesn’t help either. By clicking it you only get the macro running, exit animation is not triggered.
Anyway, I don’t want to bind the macro to any other workaround object but the slide itself.
Anyone knows how to trigger a PowerPoint VBA script on slide onclick event?
Anyone knows a secret setting that will make the exit animation work as expected i.e. animating right before exiting a slide while transitioning to the next one?
Anyone knows how to beat this dragon?
Thank you!
Why community consensus is tight on this one
Across 95 VBA Core entries in the archive, the accepted answer here holds niche answer (below median) status — meaning voters are unusually aligned on the right fix.
The Verified Solution — niche answer (below median) (+3)
Verbal answer — walkthrough without a code block
Note: the verified answer is a prose walkthrough. If you need a runnable sample, check VBA Core entries ranked in the top 10 of the same archive.
You could also set the TRANSITIONS (tab) -> Advance Slide After 00:00:00 seconds. You will need to set the SLIDESHOW (tab) to Use (Rehearsal) Timings. This will automatically advance the slide after the last animation action. You could, of course give it some seconds to wait, but it sounds like you just want to advance the slide.
When to Use It — vintage (14+ years old, pre-2013)
Ranked #56th in its category — specialized fit
This pattern sits in the 98% tail relative to the top answer. Reach for it when your scenario closely matches the question title; otherwise browse the VBA Core archive for a higher-consensus alternative.
What changed between 2012 and 2026
The answer is 14 years old. The VBA Core object model has been stable across Office 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, 365, and 2024/2026 LTSC, so the pattern still compiles. Changes that might affect you: 64-bit API declarations (use PtrSafe), blocked macros in downloaded files (Mark-of-the-Web), and the shift toward Office Scripts for web-first workflows.