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.pptx455.3 KB Adding and Manipulating Shapes - Completed.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 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.
The Styles in the Shape Styles gallery derive from the combinations of colors, fonts and effects in your chosen theme or the template you are using.
Login to download- 00:04 Sooner or later in Powerpoint you're going to need to add shapes to slides.
- 00:07 And that's what this video is all about.
- 00:10 Shapes is as easy as finding the insert tab on the ribbon.
- 00:13 This looks like a button, but it's actually a drop down menu that gives us
- 00:16 a whole bunch of shapes in various groups I go for a rectangle, which is called
- 00:21 a rounded rectangle, click and release, and there is our shape on the slide.
- 00:26 Now, while the shape is selected, the format tab is a viable for
- 00:28 the drawing tools.
- 00:30 And here on the insert shapes group is another menu, and
- 00:33 I've quite often figured you can get your shapes from wherever you can find them.
- 00:38 And oval click, drag, release, and there it is.
- 00:42 Move that down to the bottom, and they are also available on the home tab.
- 00:46 I'm going to grab a little triangle, drop and release, and there it is,
- 00:50 three shapes on the slide.
- 00:52 Adding text to these shapes is as easy as selecting and typing.
- 00:55 So, start, middle, And we'll call this one
- 01:01 and now, some do actually connect these with connector lines, so
- 01:04 insert the shapes drop-down box, a curved arrow connector.
- 01:10 Notice as I move my mouse over the shapes,
- 01:12 I get this little grey dot which are connector points.
- 01:15 So when I click, the connector will snap to that.
- 01:18 The little green dot says it's connected, the white circle says that it's not.
- 01:22 So click, drag to a connection point, and it will snap the little gray icon there.
- 01:28 So, let's grab another one from here.
- 01:31 Hover over the shape, find a gray dot, click, holding the mouse drag,
- 01:36 find another point, release.
- 01:38 And there it is.
- 01:39 Very cool, very simple.
- 01:41 And the great thing about it is you can move your shapes around with by mouse or
- 01:45 the arrow keys.
- 01:46 They update because they stay connected.
- 01:48 Very cool.
- 01:50 So, let's do some formatting.
- 01:51 First, we have to set something up so
- 01:53 you can see what is different in Powerpoint 2016.
- 01:56 Let's select that triangle, move it to the right of our slide and add some text,
- 02:03 now we click Shape Styles on this format tab.
- 02:07 Select this one.
- 02:09 I hit F4 on the keyboard, which is the redo the last command instruction,
- 02:14 which works most times and saves time.
- 02:16 Now, on this gallery we have the theme stalls and
- 02:19 a new set of styles that are preset.
- 02:22 Now if we hover, the shaker is to disappear because these presets affect
- 02:26 both the text and the shape.
- 02:29 Without text and
- 02:29 the shape there is nothing to see because there is no shape filling the border.
- 02:33 If we hover over these, we see the shape reappear
- 02:36 because we are previewing both the shape, which has color, and the text.
- 02:41 Now, notice how they change as we move to different presets.
- 02:44 Now, let's click a connector, let's take this one, and
- 02:48 that one, and there is almost a little bit of a flow chart.
- 02:54 We can align those shapes into all kinds of things.
- 02:56 Very cool.
- 02:57 One last item is that if I actually click on one of these connectors,
- 03:00 provided it is connected at both ends, then we can reroute the connectors
- 03:04 Which is basically about moving them to a new location.
- 03:08 I prefer to do this with the mouse, but also right clock, connect to time.
- 03:12 We can change to a symbol of one.
- 03:15 So, an elbow connector, and there we have our elbow connectors.
- 03:19 So, inserting shapes is very easy.
- 03:21 Use the insert menu or the home tab, find the drop down area of the group of shapes.
- 03:27 Connectors will click to snapping points, the green dots show you they're connected.
- 03:31 Indeed, you can format them, and you can right click on them
- 03:34 to get a couple of menu items, well worth your time to learn and save time.
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