PowerPoint: only show the objects belonging to a particular animation step

You may find the Selection Pane to be useful. Go to Home –> Editing –> Select –> Selection Pane…  It opens as a panel on the right side of the screen,

so you may need to toggle back and forth between it and the Animation Pane –– AFAIK, you can’t have them both open at once.

Features:

• You can select an object by clicking on its name.  (Objects are given default names when they are created; you can change them.  For example, you might want to give objects names like “Step 5.Rectangle 12”, to make it easier to manage your animation steps.)  Ctrl+Click works as you would expect.

• You can hide an object by clicking on the eye checkbox to the right of its name.  There are “Show All” and “Hide All” buttons at the bottom.

• You can easily see and change the stacking order (as in “Bring Forward”) of the objects with arrow buttons at the bottom of the pane.  Even if you do nothing else, bringing the objects that you want to work on to the front will make them easier to select.