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Adding and Manipulating Shapes

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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
442.5 KB
Adding and Manipulating Shapes - Complete.pptx
446.3 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 green dot is visible. The yellow rectangle changes the shape center point. A white dot indicates the connector is not connected to a shape.
  • Shapes can be formatted – Format tab, Insert Shapes group.
  • Connectors can be formatted – with a connector selected, Format tab, Shape styles group.
  • To add text to shape 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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  • 00:03 Sooner or later in PowerPoint you’re going to need to add shapes to slides and that’s what this video is all about. Shapes is as easy as
  • 00:10 finding the insert tab on the ribbon, this looks like a button but it’s actually a drop down menu that gives us a whole bunch of shapes in various
  • 00:17 groups. I go for rectangle which is called a rounded rectangle, click and release and there is our shape on the slide. Now while the shape
  • 00:27 is selected the format tab is available for the drawing tools, and here on the insert shapes group is another menu and I figure get your
  • 00:36 shapes from wherever you can find them. An oval, click, drag, release and there it is, move that down the bottom, and there’s also on
  • 00:44 available on the home tab so I’m going to grab a little triangle, drop and release and there it is, three shapes on the slide. Adding text to these
  • 00:53 shapes is as easy as selecting and typing, so start, middle, and we’ll call this one, end. Now it’s time to actually connect these with
  • 01:04 connector lines so insert, the shapes drop down box, a curved arrow connector, notice a I move my mouse over the shapes I get these little blue
  • 01:12 dots which are connector points, so when I click the connector will snap to that, the little green dot says it’s connected, the white square says
  • 01:22 it’s not, so click, drag to a connection point, and it will snap the little yellow icon is about moving the centre point. So let’s grab another one from
  • 01:33 here, hover over the shape, find a blue dot, click, holding the mouse, drag, find another point, release, and there is it, very cool, very simple
  • 01:44 and the great thing about these connectors is, as you move your shapes around, whether by the mouse or the arrow key, they update
  • 01:51 because they stay connected, very cool. Let’s do some formatting, click, shape styles on the format tab, select, select this one. I hit F4 on
  • 01:59 the keyboard which is the redo last command instruction, which works most times and saves time. Click the connector, let’s take this one,
  • 02:10 and that one, let’s take this one, and there is almost a little bit of a flowchart. We can align those shapes and do all kinds of things. Very
  • 02:19 cool. One last item is that if we actually click on one of these connectors, we can reroute the connectors which is basically about moving
  • 02:27 them to a new location. I prefer to do that with a mouse, but also, right click, connector type, we can change to a similar one, so an elbow
  • 02:36 connector and there we have our elbow connectors. So inserting shapes is very easy, use the insert menu or the home tab, find the
  • 02:45 drop down area of the groups of shapes, connectors will click to snapping points, the green dots show you that they’re connected
  • 02:52 indeed, you can format them and you can right click on them and get a couple of menu items, so well worth your time to learn to save time.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.

Formatting Text
05m:44s
Duplicate and Add Multiple Shapes
03m:50s
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