Selecting and Aligning Objects on a Slide

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About this lesson

In this important lesson, we will learn how to select objects and use alignment tools, distribution tools, grouping, gridlines and guides to position multiple objects on the slide. A must for a professional looking presentation!

Quick reference

Selecting and Aligning Objects on a Slide

Nothing makes a presentation look unprofessional quite like shapes, pictures, text and objects that aren't aligned correctly. PowerPoint contains many selection and alignment tools that can help with this and ensure that objects are aligned on the slide and with other objects. 

When to use

Use alignment tools whenever you create a PowerPoint presentation that includes content. 

Instructions

Smart Guides and Gridlines

Smart Guides and Gridlines can assist you when aligning objects on a slide. When Smart Guides are turned on, red lines will appear on the slide when you move an object to let you know if it's centered or aligned with other objects. Gridlines are a temporary grid that can be used to align objects. 

  1. From the Home tab, in the Slides group, click New Slide. 
  2. Select Blank. 
  3. From the Insert tab, in the Illustrations group, click Shapes. 
  4. Select the oval tool. 
  5. Hold down SHIFT and draw a circle on the slide. 
  6. Press CTRL+D twice to duplicate the circle twice. 
  7. Right-click on a blank area of the slide. 
  8. From the contextual menu, select Grids and Guides. 
  9. Turn on Smart Guides. 
  10. From the contextual menu, select Grids and Guides.
  11. Turn on Gridlines. 

Use Smart Guides and Gridlines to help you align shapes and other objects on the slide. 

Selecting Shapes

Shapes can be selected in several ways. 

  1. Draw a rectangle around all of the objects on the page to select them. 
  2. Click on the first shape, hold down SHIFT and click on the other shapes. 
  3. Click on the first shape, hold down CTRL and click on the other shapes. 
  4. Click on the first shape, from the Shape Format tab, in the Arrange group, click Selection pane. Select multiple shapes by holding down the CTRL key. 

Aligning and Distributing Shapes

  1. Select the shapes on the slide. 
  2. From the Shape Format tab, in the Arrange group, click Align. 
  3. Choose Align Middle. 
  4. From the Shape Format tab, in the Arrange group, click Align. 
  5. Choose Distribute Horizontally. 

Grouping and Ungrouping Shapes

By default, shapes are individual objects and can be formatted, positioned and resized independently. However, you can group shapes together as one object. 

  1. Select the shapes on the slide. 
  2. Press CTRL+G or, right-click on the shapes and select Group. 
  3. From the Shape Format tab, in the Arrange group, click Align. 
  4. Choose Align Center. 
  5. To ungroup shapes, press CTRL+SHIFT+G or, right-click on the shapes and select Ungroup. 

The Selection Pane

The Selection Pane can be used to organize, identify and select objects on a slide. It's a particularly good selection method to use if the slide contains many shapes that overlap. 

  1. Select a shape. 
  2. From the Shape Format tab, in the Arrange group, click Selection Pane. 

All objects on the slide will display in the selection pane. The objects are given generic names by PowerPoint. It's recommended that you rename the shapes to make them easier to identify in the list. 

  1. Double-click on an item in the selection pane. 
  2. Type a meaningful, descriptive name. 

Hints & tips

  • The Arrange group that contains the alignment tools can also be accessed from the Home tab. 
  • Add alignment tools you use frequently to the Quick Access Toolbar. 
  • Gridlines can be turned off via the checkbox on the View tab. 
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  • 00:03 One of the most important things to learn when you're working in PowerPoint is how
  • 00:08 to select a line and group different objects on your slide.
  • 00:12 Because nothing makes a presentation look more unprofessional than having misaligned
  • 00:17 text boxes, misaligned pictures.
  • 00:19 It doesn't create a very good first impression.
  • 00:22 And in PowerPoint, there are a lot of options that are there to help you when it
  • 00:26 comes to aligning, grouping, and selecting.
  • 00:29 So let's dive in and take a look at a few of them.
  • 00:32 So we're going to do all of our lining on a completely new slide.
  • 00:36 So on the Home tab, I'm going to click the drop down underneath New Slide and
  • 00:41 select Blank slide.
  • 00:43 We then need some things to align, so let's just insert a few shapes.
  • 00:48 And I'm going to use some circles for this.
  • 00:52 Now remember, hold down your Shift key in order to get an equal circle and let go.
  • 00:57 And I'm going to have three circles on this page.
  • 01:01 So I could copy and paste, but by far the quickest thing to do is press the Ctrl+D
  • 01:06 keyboard shortcut to duplicate the shape.
  • 01:10 I've pressed that twice to get two duplicates.
  • 01:12 And I'm going to just drag these and place them haphazardly on my slide.
  • 01:18 Now, when it comes to aligning, there's a few things that you need to make sure
  • 01:21 you have turned on which are really going to help you.
  • 01:25 The first thing is, make sure that you can see both your horizontal and
  • 01:29 your vertical rulers.
  • 01:30 If you can't, if you jump up to the View tab in the Show group,
  • 01:34 make sure that you have a tick in that ruler box just there.
  • 01:38 And you'll also see underneath, I have some options for grid lines and guides.
  • 01:43 And we're going to get to those in a moment.
  • 01:45 Now aside from these little alignment utilities, if you right click
  • 01:49 your mouse anywhere on the blank slide to pull up the contextual menu,
  • 01:54 you'll see that one of the menu items in here is Grid and Guides.
  • 01:58 And the pop out menu to the side shows you some things that you can turn off and
  • 02:02 on to help you with alignment.
  • 02:04 Now I would highly recommend that you turn on Smart Guides.
  • 02:08 Now what are Smart Guides?
  • 02:09 Well, let me show you.
  • 02:11 Let's select one of our shapes.
  • 02:15 If I click on this shape and start to drag it towards the middle of the screen,
  • 02:19 can you see these red lines come up?
  • 02:21 So at the moment,
  • 02:22 it's telling me that the shape that I'm dragging is lined up with the shape below.
  • 02:27 If I move a bit further across,
  • 02:29 you can see it's telling me that that's now in the middle.
  • 02:33 If I start to drag down, I now have both a horizontal and
  • 02:37 a vertical line, so I can see that that shape is dead in the center.
  • 02:44 And you'll notice these Smart Guides, they're really helpful.
  • 02:46 They also offer information such as the distance you are away from certain
  • 02:51 objects as well.
  • 02:53 And these can really help you when it comes to aligning things on your slide.
  • 02:57 So make sure that Smart Guides are turned on.
  • 03:00 Another thing you might want to consider turning on in here is Gridlines.
  • 03:04 And by turning that grid on, I can now use this little grid to align and
  • 03:09 position my objects.
  • 03:15 So this grid works quite well in combination with those Smart Guides.
  • 03:20 Now I'm going to turn those grid lines off so we have a clean page.
  • 03:24 And I can do that by jumping up to the View tab and
  • 03:27 just taking a tick out of the Gridlines box.
  • 03:30 Let's shift our focus now to aligning shapes relative to each other,
  • 03:35 and also relative to the slide.
  • 03:38 So I'm going to select all of these shapes by dragging a big box around the outside.
  • 03:43 And we're going to use the alignment tools that are available within PowerPoint
  • 03:48 because there is quite a comprehensive set of tools.
  • 03:51 If you remember in one of the previous lessons when we were walking through
  • 03:55 the Quick Access toolbar, we actually added our alignment tools onto the QAT.
  • 03:59 If you're wondering where these tools are located on the ribbons,
  • 04:02 you'll find them in a couple of places.
  • 04:04 But as I've got shapes selected,
  • 04:07 I'll find them on the Shape Format tab over in the Arrange group.
  • 04:11 So if I click Align,
  • 04:12 the first thing I'm going to do with these shapes is I'm going to say Align Middle.
  • 04:17 So now they're aligned horizontally.
  • 04:19 Now one thing I can see is that I have unequal spacing in between each of my
  • 04:24 shapes.
  • 04:25 So back up to Align and I'm going to say Distribute Horizontally.
  • 04:30 Now essentially at the moment, all of my shapes are individual objects.
  • 04:34 You can see I have a border around each one to show that each one is individual
  • 04:38 and each one is selected.
  • 04:40 What I'm going to do now is, I want to essentially align this vertically.
  • 04:44 I want to align them as a group.
  • 04:47 So I'm going to group these shapes together to make them one object.
  • 04:50 And you can see again up in that Arrange group, I have a Group menu item.
  • 04:55 But by far a quicker way of doing this is Ctrl+G.
  • 04:58 You can see that border now encases all three of them, and anything I do
  • 05:03 is going to affect all three of those objects, or three of those shapes.
  • 05:09 So back up to Align, and I'm going to say Align Middle.
  • 05:14 So now I know that those shapes are dead in the center of the slide.
  • 05:19 Ctrl+Shift+G to ungroup them and make them individual objects again.
  • 05:23 Now the final thing I want to show you in this lesson is the Selection Pane.
  • 05:27 And this is essentially another way of selecting shapes or
  • 05:31 other objects that you have on your page, but is a bit more functional than that.
  • 05:37 So let's click on one of these shapes to pull up the Shape Format contextual tab.
  • 05:42 And in the Arrange group, we're going to select Selection Pane.
  • 05:45 And what the Selection Pane is going to show you is basically everything that you
  • 05:49 have on your slide.
  • 05:51 And PowerPoint gives every object a generic name.
  • 05:55 So you can see here Oval 1, Oval 2, Oval 3.
  • 05:58 And as I click on these, it highlights which one it's referencing on the slide.
  • 06:05 So this is somewhere you can come again to make selection.
  • 06:08 So if I wanted to select multiple, I could hold down Control and
  • 06:12 select all three of these, and you can see them selected on the slide.
  • 06:18 But more importantly, this is a great way of keeping track and
  • 06:21 managing all of the things that you have going on on your slide.
  • 06:25 Because believe me, when you start to build up your slides, you're going to have
  • 06:28 pictures and icons and charts and shapes and all different kinds of things.
  • 06:32 Keeping track of them and
  • 06:34 being able to identify each object is going to be really useful.
  • 06:39 So what I would recommend you do is that you get into the habit of naming
  • 06:42 your objects with something a bit more meaningful than the default names.
  • 06:47 So I can see here that Oval 2 is actually that first gray circle.
  • 06:51 So I'm going to change oval two to Grey Circle.
  • 06:57 One, and hit Enter.
  • 07:00 If I click on Oval 1, I'm going to double click and
  • 07:05 let's rename that Grey Circle 2.
  • 07:08 And then the final one, as you can imagine, is going to be Grey Circle 3.
  • 07:16 And you can name these whatever you like,
  • 07:18 but just give them a name that makes it easy for you to identify them.
  • 07:21 So get used to using the Selection Pane, because we are going to be using this
  • 07:25 quite a bit throughout the balance of this course.
  • 07:27 But for the time being that is it.
  • 07:29 I will see you in the next lesson.

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