Group and Ungroup Shapes

Quick reference

• 00:04 This video is all about grouping and ungrouping objects.
• 00:07 The reason you might group objects together is that if you've got lots of
• 00:10 objects on your slide it becomes very complex environment to work in.
• 00:15 You can group similar objects and
• 00:16 treat them as one object within your presentation.
• 00:19 So to demonstrate that,
• 00:20 I have three rounded rectangles with a colored background fill.
• 00:24 So this is an orange one, a yellow one, and a blue one.
• 00:29 You can certainly see that they are different objects, because I can move them
• 00:32 around, as well, as you can see the external selection handles.
• 00:36 If I draw a marquee with a mouse over those.
• 00:38 Or I could go Ctrl+A, which is the keyboard shortcut to select all,
• 00:42 right-click the Group menu, go Group, and there they are within a group.
• 00:49 Now they function as a distinct object on that slide.
• 00:52 And we can apply animations to that and do all kinds of things.
• 00:56 And even though that is grouped, I can still right-click and go Ungroup.
• 01:00 So I'll go Ctrl-Z and put that back into a group.
• 01:03 But we can also use keyboard shortcuts.
• 01:05 So, for example, ungroup is Ctrl+Shift+G and
• 01:08 there they are in the three original objects.
• 01:12 Or Ctrl+G, and they're grouped again.
• 01:15 So, I'll go Ctrl+Z.
• 01:17 Another item is if we manipulate a particular shape that's not grouped, but
• 01:20 it's been grouped before, we can select one particular object, right-click,
• 01:25 go to the Group menu item Regroup.
• 01:29 PowerPoint remembers all of the items that were in that group and
• 01:32 regroups them back together.
• 01:33 Very simple.
• 01:35 Now say, for example, we wanted to apply a very complex animation to
• 01:38 this particular group, and then we decide to change something.
• 01:42 If we undid the group, and busted that into individual objects,
• 01:46 we'd lose the animation.
• 01:48 But PowerPoint comes with the ability to select particular objects.
• 01:52 So with the group selected,
• 01:53 I can again select that particular rounded rectangle and move it around.
• 01:59 I can even apply a particular shape style effect to that.
• 02:02 And when you do that, make sure that they all balance and work together.
• 02:06 So you can group objects, ungroup them, regroup them, as well as select
• 02:11 individual objects within a group and you don't lose the grouping of those objects.
• 02:15 And notice that with one single set of external selection handles,
• 02:20 I can resize that group as well as move them around in unison.
• 02:24 So that's very handy.
• 02:27 So, very quickly, we're going to have a look at a special kind of picture.
• 02:30 This is a Windows Metafile.
• 02:33 I drag that image to the right, Ctrl+Shift+drag, release,
• 02:38 so I get a duplicate copy.
• 02:40 I'm going to right-click on the image, go to the Grouping menu, Ungroup.
• 02:45 PowerPoint pops up a dialogue box and
• 02:47 says it's a picture, not a group, because it's a vector R.
• 02:51 Do I want to convert it to a Microsoft Office drawing object?
• 02:54 I say yes.
• 02:55 Right-click, again.
• 02:57 Group.
• 02:58 Ungroup.
• 02:59 And there is a picture that's been composed of a bunch of shapes and
• 03:02 lines now busted into its individual objects.
• 03:06 So the first thing to do is to select the bounding frame with the mouse.
• 03:09 Delete.
• 03:10 If we wish, we could draw marquee over that girl,
• 03:13 go Ctrl+G, and group all of those items together, and now it's all a single group.
• 03:18 The beauty of that is because they're shapes we can apply shape effects,
• 03:22 such as Presets, and we get very nice little change in the picture.
• 03:29 or we can change the Preset like that and it works very well.
• 03:34 So remember that some pictures are actually composed of shapes and
• 03:37 you can do various effects with them.
• 03:39 So in summary, it's very easy to group objects that are similar so
• 03:42 that you can work on them in unison as one object.
• 03:46 You can still get to particular items and individual objects within the group.
• 03:49 You can ungroup.
• 03:51 You can regroup.
• 03:52 And some special formats of pictures, such as Windows Metafiles, are really group
• 03:56 shapes, and if you ungroup them twice you can work with them as well.
• 04:00 It's a very handy and very useful thing to know.

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