Align and Distribute Shapes

Quick reference

• 00:04 It’s very important that the elements that you add to a slide be balanced and aligned correctly so that they don’t look like cows that have
• 00:10 walked in off the paddock ready to eat grass on your slide. Now I’ve got 4 objects on the slide that I’ve numbered so that we can see where
• 00:16 they go when we move them. The format tab is available now that I’ve selected them and we’re going to align selected objects, so the objects
• 00:24 themselves will become the reference point. Align left and they all move to the furthermost left object which is number 1. So we go CTRL Z
• 00:37 to undo, align right, I predict they’ll all move to number 4, align top, they will move to number 1, and align bottom, and I imagine they will move
• 00:49 level with number 4, very good. And then align center, PowerPoint has done a calculation between the outermost objects and worked out
• 00:57 roughly where the center is, and the same with align middle. Very good. But we can also move them with the slide as the reference point so
• 01:07 that when we go align left, they all move to the far left of the slide. If we go align right, same thing, align top, same, and align bottom, same.
• 01:21 If we go align center they all move to the perfect center of the slide and if we go align middle they all align to the middle of the slide. Ok, very
• 01:32 simple. Now let’s look at distribute, so if we go align selected objects, distribute horizontally. They’ve moved relative to the outer boundary but
• 01:43 because they’re spatially different vertically, it’s a bit hard to tell so CTRL Z, let’s align to slide, align middle, align selected objects, distribute
• 01:56 horizontally and we can see that they’re all fairly well spaced it’s just that number 3 is behind the other objects, CTRL Z, let’s click the format tab,
• 02:07 distribute vertically and there’s no change and the reason is because they are already aligned, there’s no movement vertically for them to move.
• 02:16 Ok so let’s go relative to the slide. So we go, distribute horizontally, notice that they are indeed evenly spaced. The same gap between
• 02:29 number 1 and the edge of the slide, between each shape and between number 4 and the edge of the slide. Now if I go distribute vertically,
• 02:39 do you know what will happen, I would predict that number 1 will pop to the top of the slide, number 4 will pop to the bottom and they’ll be
• 02:47 distributed evenly. Let’s see what happens. Well, isn’t that interesting. They’ve moved all around, the amount of distance is the same but
• 02:57 if we have a look at them, maybe what we need to do is actually move this one up a little bit, that one, that one, and that one, so that they
• 03:06 are actually already vaguely in that order. So let’s go distribute vertically, that’s very good, let’s go distribute horizontally, very good. Now
• 03:16 they are indeed evenly spaced on the slide. So the order from which a shape will start can determine what happens when they are aligned
• 03:25 or distributed. So let’s select all of those finally with our mouse, I’m going to right click and go group and we can group them into one object,
• 03:36 we can shrink them down slightly and rotate them around. And there we have some shapes on our slide, they are aligned and distributed
• 03:44 very evenly and it’s a very good process to go through so that the objects on your slide are aligned and distributed very easily and not like
• 03:53 our browns cows.

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