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About this lesson
Align and distribute shapes (and other content) so that they are correctly positioned to quickly balance the content on your slides and prevent the same objects on different slides jumping to different locations during a slideshow.
Lesson versions
Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:
Exercise files
Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ PowerPoint presentations from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.
Align and Distribute Shapes31.7 KB Align and Distribute Shapes - Solution
170.2 KB
Quick reference
Align and Distribute Shapes
Aligning and distributing shapes.
When to use
To align or distribute shapes evenly on a slide.
Instructions
- Select a shape on the slide, click the Format tab, and then click the Align drop-down button.
- To align selected shapes with each other, click Align Selected Objects.
- To align selected shapes relative to the slide, click Align to Slide.
- Click the Align menu item based on the alignment result you desire.
- To Distribute shapes:
- Drag a marquee (used to select parts of an image) with the pointer and release to select shapes to distribute.
- To distribute selected shapes with each other, click Align Selected Objects.
- To distribute selected shapes relative to the slide, click Align to Slide.
- Select either Distribute Horizontally or Distribute Vertically.
Also note:
Shapes will distribute vertically or horizontally depending on how they are distributed on the slide before you commence. Align Selected Objects will be unavailable if you do not select more than one object on the slide.
- 00:04 It's very important that the elements that you add to a slide be balanced and
- 00:09 aligned correctly so
- 00:10 that they don't look a bunch of cows just wandering through the paddock ready to eat the grass on your slide.
- 00:15 Now I've four objects on the slide that I've numbered so
- 00:17 that we can see where they go when we move them.
- 00:20 The format tab is available now that I've selected them and
- 00:23 we're going to align selected objects.
- 00:26 So the objects themselves will become the reference point.
- 00:29 Align left and
- 00:30 they all move to the furthermost left object which is number one.
- 00:35 So we go Ctr+Z to undo, align right.
- 00:39 I predict they'll all move to number four.
- 00:43 Align top that will move to number one and align bottom.
- 00:47 And I imagine they will move down level with number four, very good.
- 00:52 And then align center.
- 00:54 PowerPoint has done a calculation between the outer most objects and
- 00:57 break out roughly where the center is.
- 00:59 And the same with align middle, very good.
- 01:03 But we can also move them with the slide as the reference point so
- 01:08 that when we go align left they all move to the far left of the slide.
- 01:12 If we go align right the same thing happens.
- 01:15 Align top, same, and align bottom, same.
- 01:21 If we go Align Center, they all move to the perfect center of the slide.
- 01:25 And if we go align middle they all align to the middle of the slide.
- 01:29 Okay, very simple.
- 01:30 Now let's look at distribute.
- 01:33 So if we go Align Selected Objects, Distribute Horizontally,
- 01:38 they've moved relative to the outer boundary.
- 01:42 But because they're spatially different vertically it's a bit hard to tell so.
- 01:46 So Ctrl+Z, let's align to slide, align middle,
- 01:51 align selected objects, distribute horizontally.
- 01:57 And we can see that they're all fairly well spaced.
- 02:00 It's just that number three is behind the other objects.
- 02:03 Ctrl+Z, let's click the format tab > Distribute Vertically.
- 02:10 And there's no change, and the reason is because they're already aligned.
- 02:13 There's no movement vertically for them to move.
- 02:17 So let's go relative to slide.
- 02:19 So we go distribute horizontally.
- 02:22 Notice indeed that they are evenly spaced.
- 02:25 The same gap between number one and the edge of the slide between each shape and
- 02:29 between number four and the edge of the slide.
- 02:32 Now if we go Distribute Vertically, do you know what will happen?
- 02:35 I would predict that number one will pop to the top of the slide.
- 02:39 Number four will pop to the bottom and they'll be distributed evenly.
- 02:42 Let's see what happens.
- 02:44 Well, isn't that interesting? They've all moved around.
- 02:47 The amount of difference is the same, but
- 02:49 if we take a look at them, it's fuddled up.
- 02:53 Maybe what we need to do is actually move this one up a little bit.
- 02:55 So that one and that one.
- 02:59 And that way they're already vaguely aligned in that order.
- 03:03 So let's go Distribute Vertically, now that's good.
- 03:05 Let's go Distribute Horizontally, very good.
- 03:09 So sometimes you'd need to play around a little bit
- 03:12 with it because you don't always get the result that you expect.
- 03:15 So the order from which a shape will start can determine what happens when they
- 03:18 are aligned or distributed.
- 03:20 So let's go and select all of those finally with our mouse.
- 03:23 I'm going to right-click and go Group.
- 03:26 We can group them in to one object.
- 03:28 We can shrink them down slightly and rotate them around.
- 03:32 And there we have some shapes on our slide.
- 03:35 They're aligned and distributed very evenly.
- 03:37 And it's a very good process to go through so
- 03:40 that the object on your slide are aligned and distributed.
- 03:43 It's easy to do and they won't look like cows eating grass on your slide,
- 03:47 which is awesome.
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