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About this lesson

Add and work with shapes, which are one of the most important building blocks on a slide, including rectangles, ovals, and triangles.

Lesson versions

Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:

2010, 2013, 2016, 2019/365.

Exercise files

Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ PowerPoint presentations from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.

Adding and Manipulating Shapes.pptx
455.3 KB Adding and Manipulating Shapes - Complete.pptx
453.4 KB

Quick reference

Topic

Adding and manipulating shapes.

When to use

To add shapes with text or to create flow charts.

Instructions

  • Insert shapes from the:
    • Click the Insert tab, and within the Illustrations group, click the arrow below the Shapes button, or
    • Click the Home tab, within the Drawing group, or
    • With the shape selected, click the Format tab, go to the Insert Shapes group.
  • With the shape selected, click the slide to drop a shape on it, or drag a marquee (used to select parts of an image) with the pointer and release.
  • Connectors are connected to shapes when a red dot is visible. The yellow diamond changes the shape center point. A white dot indicates the connector is not connected to a shape.
  • Shapes can be formatted – Format tab, Shape Styles group.
  • Connectors can be formatted – with a connector selected, Format tab, Shape Styles group.
  • To add text to a shape, select the shape with your pointer and start typing.

Also note:

Right-click a shape icon and select Lock Drawing Mode to drop multiple shapes to the slide with the pointer. Connectors properly connected to a shape stay connected to that shape when the shape is moved.

 

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  • 00:05 Sooner or later you’re going to need to insert shapes on a PowerPoint slide and this video is all about inserting shapes as well as a few other
  • 00:10 things like connecters. So on our blank slide, inserting a shape is as easy as the insert tab, click the little shapes, it looks like a button but
  • 00:20 it’s a drop down menu that gives us a whole group of shapes. Select from the rectangles group a rounded rectangle, click with the
  • 00:27 mouse, click drag release and there’s our rounded rectangle. Now drawing tools has popped up because the shape is selected. Click
  • 00:37 the format tab and we have an insert shapes group with the same menu item available here and it's fairly efficient and we could drop that down and
  • 00:46 select. I like to grab my shapes from wherever I can find them so I’ll click an oval, draw, release, and it’s done. And this is also available in my
  • 00:55 installation on the drawing group on the home tab, so let’s click a little triangle, drop and release and there are our three shapes.
  • 01:03 Adding text to these is as simple as selecting them with the mouse and typing in start, middle, and end. And you can see that if we decided to get really
  • 01:15 fancy and do a lot of work on this we could very quickly create a flowchart out of these shapes. Ok, so let’s start exploring things that are called
  • 01:23 connecters. Drop the little menu item down, and all of these lines are actually connectors, so a curved arrow connector. Notice as I hover the mouse over, this shape
  • 01:35 little red dots show connection snapping points so if I click, there is the connector, the little red dot shows me indeed that is connected at that
  • 01:45 end, the white dots says it’s not so find another snapping point, release and there it is. This little diamond is all about moving the centre point of
  • 01:55 that connector. So let’s find another one on the home tab, this time I hold the mouse, it’s already snapped there, click, drag, find another snapping
  • 02:06 point, release, and the red dots show me that it is connected as well. These shapes are very easy to format, format tab, shapes, styles,
  • 02:17 select a particular shape style, click this one, F4 is the redo last command button and works most times. It saves you time in not having to go
  • 02:29 back to the ribbon all the time, F4, we can select the particular connector, drop the shape style down, select that one, or we could go back
  • 02:39 to the ribbon if we wish and apply that again. The good thing about these connectors is that they stay connected, if I move this shape around
  • 02:46 with the mouse, they indeed stay connected to the edge of that shape, and thats a great way to build your presentation and move things around
  • 02:53 And it works also if I bump them with the arrow keys on the keyboard. Also, if we right click on the connector, we get a menu item where we can reroute the connector which
  • 03:01 means that it jumps to another snapping point, I prefer to grab them with the mouse and drop them exactly where I wish but also we can
  • 03:08 change the connector type to something similar such as an elbow connector. So shapes are very easy to insert in PowerPoint, you can click on
  • 03:16 them and add text, you can add connecters to them, which will update as you move things around, and they’re very easy to format and well worth your time investigating
  • 03:24 because it will save you so much time.

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