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About this lesson

Learn to move and color shapes to draw attention to an area.

Quick reference

Basic Use of Shapes

Graphical user interface, text, application Description automatically generated

When to use

Shapes are for more than decoration. They draw a reader’s eye to a specific point. For example, the red outline above is simply a rectangle shape placed for a useful purpose.

Instructions:

Note: When you add a shape, a new ribbon appears called the Shape Format ribbon.

Insert Ribbon, Shapes

  1. Click Insert, Shapes: a gallery of available shapes appears on the screen
  2. Click any shape and notice your cursor changes to a crossbar.
  3. Click to drop, or Click and drag to control the size of the shape on your document.
     

Move and Resize a Shape

  1. Move a Shape:  When dragging a shape to a new area of your document, make sure to click the edge of the shape rather than a re-size handle.  The cursor will have 4 arrows on it.
  2. Re-size a Shape: You can resize using the white handles around the shape frame; and you can use the Size options on the Shape Format ribbon.

Shape Styles

Notice the gallery of Shape Styles with ABC in the shape examples. That allows you to type words inside your shape.

You also can choose a specific “Shape Fill” color, even “No Fill” if you want a transparent box.

You can choose a color for the outline and even the thickness, or WEIGHT, of the outline:  EXAMPLE

And Shape Effects will give a new dimension to the look of the shape. Click and experiment!

Layout Options

 

  • The tiny symbol next to the shape is the “Layout Options” tool. This allows you to choose how the shape aligns with the text of your document.
  • Click through the options and observe what happens as each is selected.

There is no right or wrong answer when using Layout Options; it is simply up to you and your document design choices.

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  • 00:04 This is a fun lesson about using shapes,
  • 00:07 which allows us to put art into our documents.
  • 00:10 On the screen, I'm going to draw a circle, square, two hearts, and
  • 00:14 a lightning bolt and then we'll go back and edit those.
  • 00:17 Go to the Insert ribbon and you'll see the button for Shapes.
  • 00:21 A gallery opens up and you can peruse those and choose anything you'd like.
  • 00:25 This isn't a process of click and drag, we simply select, for instance, the oval.
  • 00:31 Click it.
  • 00:32 And now notice my cursor has become a black crossbar.
  • 00:35 I simply click to drop it.
  • 00:37 I can click and drag, or I can just click and
  • 00:40 it'll drop a perfect circle on the screen.
  • 00:43 Now let's go get a square.
  • 00:44 Insert ribbon > Shapes.
  • 00:47 Click a Square and drop it.
  • 00:52 Let's go get two hearts.
  • 00:53 I'm going to get one heart and then copy paste it.
  • 00:56 Shapes > Heart.
  • 00:58 Now I can click and drag it this time.
  • 01:01 And then I'm going to copy, Ctrl+C, paste, Ctrl+V as in Victor.
  • 01:07 Now we're going to go get a lightning bolt, Insert > Shapes > Lightning Bolt.
  • 01:14 Activate that, come out here, click and drag to drop it.
  • 01:17 Notice when I try to move that and make it face left,
  • 01:20 it will not do it when I'm first inserting it.
  • 01:23 I'll have to do that on the edit.
  • 01:25 And let go.
  • 01:27 Let's change this square.
  • 01:30 We're going to make it transparent and use it as a border.
  • 01:32 So I first want to reshape it into a rectangle because I want to
  • 01:37 place it above and over the top of my heading.
  • 01:41 I'm coming up to the Shape Format ribbon, go to the Shape Fill color and
  • 01:47 we want to transparent, which means no fill color.
  • 01:52 Now we want to change the border to red and
  • 01:55 we want to make it one and a half points thick.
  • 01:59 So right back to the Shape Outline button.
  • 02:02 Notice down here it says, Weight and we can tell it one and a half points.
  • 02:06 And now we have a thicker border around that square.
  • 02:10 Let's go to the hearts.
  • 02:12 I'm going to change the color of both of these.
  • 02:14 So on the Shape Fill color, I want one to be a bright red.
  • 02:20 I'll click the second one, go up to Shape Fill and I'd like this one to be purple,.
  • 02:25 But I want to see what more fill colors will offer me.
  • 02:30 Now in here I can design my own purple.
  • 02:32 I can click and drag around this color gallery.
  • 02:36 I can click on Standard and choose a purple.
  • 02:39 Can make it 50% transparent.
  • 02:44 And then I can come to Custom, and
  • 02:47 I can still fine-tune the colors by using the red green blue RGB.
  • 02:52 You could also change that to HSL, hue saturation lumens.
  • 02:57 It depends on how technical you want to get.
  • 03:00 I'll click OK to that.
  • 03:03 Now notice I made that one 50% transparent, so
  • 03:06 we can kind of see the image of the other heart in the background.
  • 03:09 Let's work on this lightning bolt.
  • 03:11 First of all we need to color it yellow.
  • 03:13 Shape fill, yellow, but I'd like it to face left.
  • 03:18 On the Shape Format ribbon, over on the right, there's a button, Rotate Objects.
  • 03:23 I can rotate right 90 degrees, left 90, flip vertical, flip horizontal.
  • 03:30 There's even an easier way.
  • 03:32 Notice that the handles on the side of this are like pages in a book.
  • 03:37 I can literally click the left handle and
  • 03:40 fold the page to the right and flip it over.
  • 03:43 Now that's my preferred way to flip any shape on the screen.
  • 03:47 Well, this is an exercise document, so go ahead and play with those.
  • 03:50 It's actually really fun to get to know the shapes and the shape formatting.

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