Locked lesson.
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
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Exercise files
Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ PowerPoint presentations from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.
Adding and Manipulating Shapes.pptx442.5 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.
Login to download- 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.
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