Locked lesson.
About this lesson
Group various shapes together into a single slide object to help you position the group of shapes in a specific location, while still gaining access to the size and formatting options available within PowerPoint for those individual shapes.
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Exercise files
Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ PowerPoint presentations from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.
Group and Ungroup Shapes.pptx43.1 KB Group and Ungroup Shapes - Completed.pptx
89.3 KB
Quick reference
Topic
Grouping multiple objects into a single object.
When to use
When it’s easier to treat multiple objects as a single object – to move, resize or apply an animation.
Instructions
Group objects
- Select the various objects, and either:
- Right-click on the object selection, click the Group menu item, and then click Group, or
- Use keyboard shortcut Ctrl+G.
Ungroup grouped objects
- Select the various objects, and either:
- Right-click on the object selection, click the Group menu item, and then click Ungroup, or
- Use keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+G.
Regroup previously grouped objects
- Select one of the previously grouped objects, then right-click on the object selection, click the Regroup.
Move a single object within a group
- Select the group of objects with the pointer.
- Select the single object within the group.
- Move the object with either the pointer by dragging or bumping the object with the arrow keys on the keyboard.
Also note:
Grouping objects allows you to move, resize, rotate or apply various formats to objects. You can learn more about this feature by experimenting with it.
- 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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