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 PowerPoint presentation used in the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.
Adding and Manipulating Shapes.pptx448.2 KB
Quick reference
Adding and Manipulating Shapes
Adding and manipulating shapes.
When to use
To add shapes with text or to create flow charts.
Instructions
- To insert shapes:
- 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 and
- 00:07 that's what this video is all about.
- 00:10 Adding shapes is as easy as finding the Insert tab on the ribbon.
- 00:14 This looks like a button, but
- 00:15 it's actually a drop-down menu that gives a whole bunch of shapes in various groups.
- 00:20 I go for a rectangle which is really a rounded rectangle, click and
- 00:25 release in there is our shape on the slide.
- 00:27 Now while the shape is selected, the Format tab is available for
- 00:31 the drawing tools, and here on the Insert shapes group is another menu.
- 00:36 I figured you might as well get your shapes from wherever you can find them.
- 00:40 An oval, click drag, release it and there it is.
- 00:44 Move that down to the bottom and so these are available on the Home tab as well.
- 00:49 I'm going to grab a little triangle, drop, and release, and
- 00:54 then we have three shapes on the slide.
- 00:56 Adding text to the shape is as easy as selecting and tipping, so
- 01:00 start middle and we'll call this one end.
- 01:05 Now it's time to actually connect this shapes with connector lines, so
- 01:08 Insert, the shapes drop-down box a curved arrow connector.
- 01:14 Notice as I move my mouse over the shapes I get this little gray
- 01:17 dots which are connector points.
- 01:20 When I click the connector it will snap to that,
- 01:23 the little green dots says its connected.
- 01:26 And this one says that it's not, so click and
- 01:29 drag to the connection point and I will snap to that little gray icon.
- 01:33 Let's grab another one from here,
- 01:35 hover over the the shape, follow the gray dot, click.
- 01:39 Hold the mouse drag, find another dot, release and there it is very cool,
- 01:43 very simple.
- 01:43 And the great thing about these connectors is that as you
- 01:46 move shapes around whether by the mouse or
- 01:49 the arrow keys, they update because they stay connected, very cool.
- 01:54 So let's do some formatting.
- 01:56 So we'll select the arrow, move it to the right of our slide and
- 01:59 add some text like that.
- 02:02 And we click Shape Styles on the Format tab, select, and select this one.
- 02:10 Hit F4 on the keyboard, which is the redo last command instruction and
- 02:15 that works most times, and it saves time.
- 02:18 Now this gallery, we have the styles and the set of presets.
- 02:23 Now if we hover over one where there is no text or shape,
- 02:28 appears to disappear because the preset affects both the text and the shape.
- 02:34 And without any text in that shape there's nothing to see because there is no shape
- 02:38 fill or border.
- 02:40 If we hover over these we see the shape reappear because we are previewing both
- 02:45 the shape which has color and the text.
- 02:48 And noticed how they change as we move to different presets.
- 02:53 Now let's click our connector, let's take this one and that one, and that one.
- 02:59 And there is almost a little bit of a flow chart.
- 03:02 We can align these shapes into all kinds of things, very cool.
- 03:06 One last thing is, that if we actually click on one of those connectors,
- 03:11 provided it is connected at both ends, and we can reroute the connectors,
- 03:15 which is basically moving them to a new location.
- 03:19 I prefer to do that with a mouse.
- 03:21 But also right click > Connector Types,
- 03:26 we can change to a similar one, so an elbow connector.
- 03:30 And there we have our elbow connectors.
- 03:32 So inserting shapes is very easy using the Insert menu of the Home tab.
- 03:37 Find the drop-down area of the group of shapes.
- 03:40 Connectors will click to snapping-points, and
- 03:43 the green dots show you that they are indeed connected.
- 03:47 You can format them, and
- 03:48 you can right-click on them and get a couple item menus as well.
- 03:51 So it's worth time learning to save yourself a lot of time.
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