Using Reverse to Slide in and Slide Out an Animation

David Blatner

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You have an object and a couple of buttons (labeled “More” and “Less”), and you want to object to fly in when you click More, and fly out when you click “Less”. It’s easy to apply an animation — say Fly in From Left — to the object in the Animation panel. And it’s easy to set up the first button to Play the animation. But how do you make the object “fly out” again?

This seems tricky at first because you can only apply one animation to an object at a time. There are some workarounds where you can apply one animation to an object, then group that object with another invisible object and apply another animation to the group?

But there’s a much easier way: Select the “less” button (the one you want to make the object fly out again) and then choose the Animation action. But this time, instead of using the Play Option, choose Reverse from the Options pop-up menu:

Now this button will play the very same animation? but in reverse, sending it out “off stage” again.

Sometimes it’s the little things that we miss, but which can help the most!