By the time we reach the age where we attend work-related presentations, we are already well familiar with the set up. After all, we spent all of our school days staring at a teacher, who would point at information on a blackboard.

In my old school we had a geography teacher who was quite accomplished in the art of drawing with chalks. As he told the class about different peoples of the world, from tribes deep in the rain forest to Eskimos up in the Arctic, he would draw on the blackboard, in a style similar to that of Rolf Harris, a scene relating to those particular people. He would also inject a little humour into the picture, perhaps a cheeky monkey hanging from a branch by its tail and taking a photograph, or a TV aerial protruding from the top of an igloo. These combined art and geography lessons were very popular and the whole class would sit in complete silence from start to finish. All of which goes to show that putting that little extra effort into a presentation can retain the attention of an audience.

In Microsoft PowerPoint we can create stylish presentations that are enhanced by the use of basic animation, and all without the need of the artistic skills of my former teacher. One way to give your presentation that professional edge is by animating text. There are many ways to do this and here are a few techniques.

The text in each slide of a presentation can be animated in whatever way is most suitable for that particular message. For example if you have a block of text that gives historical information about the subject of your presentation, a simple fade in can be effective. Bullet point, on the other hand, can benefit from the impact of flying into position from an edge of the screen. You can also choose the way an animation appears, either automatically or controlled by you.

Let us assume that you have a presentation set up on the title slide. The next slide contains a combination of information and bullet points within two separate text boxes. The information is "Four things our competitors don't like about us," and the bullet points read speed, economy, reliability and choice.

You want the information to appear before the bullet points so select Animations from the ribbon, then select the text box you wish to animate and click on the Animate tab. This will open up a menu of different animation options and, as you roll over each one with your cursor, a preview will appear so you can see how that option would look. From this group select Fly In. The default setting for this option is to fly up from the bottom of the screen but you can change this by selecting Custom Animation from the Animations group.

In the Custom Animation pane select Modify Fly In and from the Direction options select the way you want your text to fly onto the page. You will also see a menu of Start options that control how and when your animation begins. You want this opening text to fly onto the page automatically, so select After Previous. This will trigger your animation to begin as soon as that slide is selected. And that is it; your first piece of text has flown into position - now onto those bullet points.

Select the first bullet point and go to the Customise Animation pane. Open the Add Effect menu and select Entrance and then choose Fly In from the list. As you want to say a few words about each of these bullet points after they appear, you need to take control of when the next one will fly in. To start each fly in with a mouse click, open the Start menu and select On Click. Next select the direction you want the text to fly in from as before and open the Speed menu to select a speed that you think looks good. Remember, bullet points are for impact so a faster setting may work best. Repeat this process through the rest of the bullet points and you're done. Check out a preview of the whole slide by clicking the Slide Show button on the bottom of the screen and then clicking the mouse.

You can also add sounds to these effects and, as always, the message is to experiment and explore the many different ways there are to increase the impact of your text by basic animation.

One final point to take into consideration is that you should not overload your presentation with fancy tricks. Too much animation or too many clever effects can distract your audience from the actual subject matter of the slide show. Try out your presentation on others before you finalise the details and ask their opinion. If they think the slides that make up the show are too 'busy', then perhaps it may be wise to tone things down a little.

PowerPoint gives us all the opportunity to create stylish, eye-catching presentations that can convey information to an audience in a professional manner, and all at the click of a mouse. These are only the very basics of the types of animated effects PowerPoint is capable of. Learn how to produce more even more complicated and effective animations and your services as a presentation compiler will be in demand.