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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 PowerPoint presentation used in the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.
Group and Ungroup Shapes.pptx564 KB
Quick reference
Group and Ungroup Shapes
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.
- 00:08 And the reason you might groups objects together is that if you got a lot of
- 00:11 objects on the slide, it becomes a bit of a complex environment to work in.
- 00:15 And you can group similar objects and
- 00:17 treat them as one object within your presentation.
- 00:19 So, to demonstrate this I have three rounded rectangles with a colored
- 00:23 background fill.
- 00:25 So an orange one, a yellow one, and
- 00:27 a blue one you can certainly see that they are different objects because I can move
- 00:30 them around as well as you can see the external selection handles.
- 00:36 If I draw a marquee with the mouse over those or I can go Ctrl+I on the keyboard.
- 00:41 Right-click the Group menu and go Group and there they are within a Group.
- 00:48 Now they function as a distinct object on that slide, and
- 00:52 we can apply animations to that, do all kinds of things.
- 00:55 And even though that is a grouped object I can still right click and
- 00:58 go Ungroup, so I can go Ctrl+Z and
- 01:02 put that back into a group, but we can also use keyboard shortcuts.
- 01:06 So for example, ungrouping is Ctrl+Shift+G and there they are in the three
- 01:11 original objects or Ctrl+G and they are grouped again, so I'll go Ctrl+Z.
- 01:17 Another concept is that if we manipulate a particular shape that's not grouped, but
- 01:23 it's been grouped before, we can select one particular object, right-click,
- 01:27 go to the Group menu item, Regroup.
- 01:30 So, PowerPoint remembers all of the items that were in the group, and
- 01:33 re-groups them back together very simple.
- 01:36 Now say for example we wanna apply a very complex animation to this particular
- 01:40 group and then we decide to change something.
- 01:43 If we undid the group and busted that into individual objects,
- 01:47 we'd lose the animation.
- 01:49 But PowerPoint has the ability to select particular
- 01:52 objects within the group selected.
- 01:55 I can select that particular rounded rectangle and
- 01:58 move it around, or I can apply a particular shape style, and
- 02:02 when you do that, make sure that they all balance and work together of course.
- 02:06 So you can group objects, ungroup them, regroup them, as well as select individual
- 02:11 objects within a group, and you don't lose the grouping of those objects.
- 02:16 And notice that with one single set of external selection handles, I could resize
- 02:21 that group, as well as move them around in unison and that's very handy.
- 02:25 So in summary, it's very easy to group objects that are similar so
- 02:28 that you can work with them in unison as one object.
- 02:32 You can still get to particular items and individual objects within that group.
- 02:37 You can ungroup, you can regroup, and it's a very handy and
- 02:41 very useful technique to know.
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