Powerpoint Morph no longer working correctly after latest update

Russell Lee 20

The morph function is suddenly not working correctly. For instance, when I morph from one part of an image to another, the entire image distorts then repaints.

Russell Lee 20 Reputation points

2026-03-25T03:09:17.6833333+00:00

I have hundreds of existing morphs in dozens of previous PowerPoint presentations. Are you telling me I now need to reconfigure ALL of them to work properly? This is not practical!

Answer accepted by question author

Arlene D 36,075 Independent Advisor

There is no setting to force Morph to treat cropped images as the same object.

When you change the crop, PowerPoint may treat it as a new object, so Morph fails. To keep Morph working, keep the same image unchanged, or use shapes to hide parts while resizing or moving the image.

Russell Lee 20 Reputation points

2026-03-25T14:20:23.59+00:00

Okay, so even the "!!" object naming system won't help? That's too bad. I'm cautiously hopeful that I won't need to RE-DO all of the hundreds of crop morphs I have in existing presentations. I will have to go through them all to find out. Maybe Microsoft can do something about this in a future release. Thank you for all of your help, Arlene D!

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Arlene D 36,075 Reputation points Independent Advisor

2026-03-25T05:55:27.1+00:00

Does it work if you run the show with F5 instead of Shift+F5?

Use two copies of the same image on both slides and avoid changing the crop between slides. On slide 1, place a rectangle over the second person and fill it with the slide background color to hide them. On slide 2, remove that rectangle so both people show. Keep the image object unchanged and with the same name in Selection Pane, then apply Morph again. This keeps the object identical so Morph animates smoothly instead of distorting.
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Russell Lee 20 Reputation points

2026-03-25T06:02:08.8833333+00:00

Arlene D, thanks for your continued help. Yes, I can use this "masking" workaround to make my effect work. My question is: Why do I need to use this workaround at all? In the past, I have always been able to make this morph effect work using crop. Did something change in the code?

What happens to all of my previous presentations that use a crop in the morph? Will those no longer work? Will I need to re-configure all of them? I have literally hundreds of such morphs in my presentations! (I am a professional lecturer.)

Thanks!
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Arlene D 36,075 Reputation points Independent Advisor

2026-03-25T05:33:54.34+00:00

Instead of Crop, keep the full image and scale it larger from the corner handles so the area you want fills the slide, then move the image so only that part is visible inside the slide frame. This keeps it as one object, which Morph tracks correctly and prevents distortion in Slide Show.
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Russell Lee 20 Reputation points

2026-03-25T05:39:14.02+00:00

Here's an example: I have a photo of two people. I duplicate the slide. One slide 1, I crop out the person on the right, so I only show the person on the left. One slide 2, I have both people. The morph effect should be that the image of one person "grows" to show the second person next to him. I don't see how you can achieve this effect only with zoom. I also need to crop. I want to emphasize: I have done this morph many times before and it has always worked. I tried doing it twice today and it failed. Instead, the first image distorts, then the second image fades in as a new image. The odd thing is that the morph works fine when I set up the transition. But when I put it into show mode, the morph fails. Thanks for helping!
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Powerpoint Morph no longer working correctly after latest update

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