How to text animation

In the olden days we simply used two layers and animated their position spreading out while using a simply linear wipe to reveal the letters. That would be a viable alternative to Rob's somewhat convoluted solution. Tweaking positions and wipe percentages is simpler than getting tracking/ kerning right. there are of course many more ways, depending on what else you may need to do with your text...

Mylenium

Type in the word Robot and twirl open the layer to the text animator button add the tracking animator and animate the spread of the letters.

Also click the add button and add the opacity.  In your range selector set your start value after the letter R and the end value before the letter T. Keyframe the opacity of the other letters with the opacity value which you added under the animators.

It might be easier to keyframe the opacity animator before keyframing the Tracking animator.