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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 Shapes36 KB Align and Distribute Shapes - Complete
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Quick reference
Topic
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.
Login to download- 00:05 It’s so important when you design a presentation that the elements on your slide are aligned and balanced and don’t look like a bunch of cows
- 00:11 that have walked in from the paddock to eat the grass all over your slides. Now these four objects that I have on the slide, the shapes, I
- 00:18 select all of them with a marquee with the mouse, the format tab becomes available and here is the align drop down item; notice that
- 00:26 align selected objects is selected. Now I would suggest if I go align left, because the boundary point is the shapes themselves or the reference
- 00:36 point, they will all move over level with number 1 and that’s exactly what happens. CTRL Z undoes, so align right, they should all move over
- 00:46 toward number 4, exactly because that becomes the reference point. Align top, they should all move up level with number 1, very
- 00:54 good. Align bottom, works as well, so we can that the shapes themselves become the external reference point. If we align center,
- 01:05 PowerPoint does a calculation between the outer edges on the left and on the right, finds the mean or the median point, and places the
- 01:13 objects there, CTRL Z, align middle, and the same happens. So that’s really cool. The other option that we have is to actually align to slide,
- 01:23 so now the slide boundary becomes the reference point, so align left, they all move to the edge of the slide, align right, they move to the
- 01:32 right edge of the slide, align top, align bottom and you can see where this is going, align center, perfectly aligns to the center, and aligned
- 01:45 middle, very good. Ok, so it’s very easy to align shapes, you can align them to the shape boundaries themselves or to the slide. Let’s
- 01:54 have a look at distribute. First of all, we’re going to distribute according to selected objects. So I go distribute horizontally, and it’s a little bit hard
- 02:06 to see because they’re out of vertical alignment so let’s undo, lets align selected objects, lets align middle, now let’s distribute horizontally,
- 02:20 and we can see now that they are evenly spaced, number 1, number 4 didn’t move because they are the outside anchor points. If
- 02:27 we go distribute vertically, nothing will happen because there is no upper or lower shape from which to take a reference point. So let’s align to
- 02:37 slide, distribute horizontally, they are now all evenly spaced across the slide. Notice even the gap between shape number 1 and number 2 is
- 02:48 the same gap between the edge of the slide and number 1 and the edge of the slide and number 4. So what happens if we distribute those
- 02:57 vertically with the reference point being the slide? There they are; they’ve all moved fairly evenly but it’s interesting that we have number
- 03:06 1, number 2, go up to number 3 and down to number 4. And part of the reason for that is the way they were originally placed on the slide. So
- 03:15 what I would do there is grab number 1 and move it up, make sure number 3 is lower, make sure number 4 is lower so that they are in some
- 03:24 form of sequence. Format, the align button, distribute horizontally, distribute vertically and there they are in the correct order, so that’s a
- 03:34 little trick when it doesn’t work exactly the way you think it might. Right click on these objects, group, and now they are all part of the one
- 03:44 group. I can shrink them down and rotate them, and there we are, we have number 1, 2, 3 and 4, they’re very evenly spaced and distributed
- 03:54 across the slide. So that’s well worth understanding and knowing, I’ll just ungroup those again, because that brings up our align
- 04:03 button so remember that you can align or you can distribute, but you can also align the selected objects so that they themselves are
- 04:11 the reference point, versus aligning to the slide, where the shapes take their reference point off the slide. So everything will be balanced and
- 04:20 aligned and distributed and it won’t look like the cows have walked in over your presentation.
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