In PowerPoint you can align, group, and order objects such as pictures, shapes, and text
boxes on the slide. If you usually create simple slides with just
text, or just text and one image, chart, or graphic, you may never need to know how to
use these tools. But, if you want more creative control and
the ability to customize your slides, you can use PowerPoint commands to arrange the
objects on your slide easily. Let's take a look at how this works.
I've inserted a few pictures on slide 8 that depict the topics we will discuss in this
section. I can click and drag each picture and try
to line them up exactly so they are evenly distributed and look nice on the slide.
But guesswork will never give me the best result.
Luckily, PowerPoint gives us several commands so we can arrange and position the content
perfectly. To arrange our three objects, let's first
select all three of the pictures. To do this, you can just click and drag until
a selection box appears around all three. Then, release the mouse button.
Now you can see that all the objects are selected. You know this because the sizing handles appear
around each one. Now you are ready to arrange the objects.
Just click the Format tab, which appears when the objects are selected.
In the Arrange group you have six commands. Right now we're going to talk about the Align,
Group, and Rotate commands. To align these objects, just click the Align
command and select an option from the menu. I want to distribute the pictures horizontally
so they will be evenly spaced across the slide, so I will select that option.
Now, I want to align the pictures so the top of each picture is level I'll just click Align
and select Align Top. We can see how this changes the alignment.
Let's look at Align Bottom and now Align Middle. These three options aligned the pictures up
with each other picture. PowerPoint did this because Align Selected
Objects is selected in the menu. If you change this and select Align to Slide
instead, these three commands will work differently. I like things the way they are, so I'll leave
it as it is. Not all the menu options make sense for every
slide. For example, our pictures are lined up horizontally.
So, if you click the Align command and then select Align Center or even Align Left or
Right the objects are formatted in a way that doesn't make sense.
The best way to learn how the Align command menu options affect the objects is to practice
using each one on a variety of slides. At times you may also want to Group objects
together to make them easier to work with. For example, on this slide, I may decide I
want to move the slides around without using the Align commands.
Instead of moving each object individually, I can group all three pictures together and
move them as one object. To do this, click and drag to select all the
objects. Then release the mouse button.
Each object should appear selected you will know it is selected because there are sizing
handles around each object. Now just select the Format tab, and click
the Group command in the Arrange group. From the menu, just select Group and now you
can see that the slide has changed and all the selected objects are enclosed in one box
with sizing handles. This means that you have successfully grouped
the selected objects into one object. To move the object, just click and drag it
to a new location on the slide, and then release the mouse button.
See how much easier that is than moving each object individually? If you want to ungroup,
just click the object to select it, and click the Group command.
From the menu, select Ungroup and now each object is individually selected and can be
moved separately. In the Arrange group you also have the Rotate
command. All the pictures on my slide look good, but
I want to show you how this works. Just select the object you need to rotate,
or turn, and then click the Rotate command. As you hover over each menu option, a live
preview of it will appear on the slide we can see how it can Rotate Right 90 degrees,
Rotate Left 90 degrees, Flip Vertical, or Flip Horizontal.
In addition to aligning and grouping, PowerPoint gives you the ability to arrange objects in
a certain order. On slide 11 we have some information about
the paperwork process. I want to insert a graphic on this slide.
You can use a SmartArt graphic, which is easy to insert and format, but sometimes you may
want to work with objects on your own. I've already inserted an arrow shape on this
slide. I need two more arrows so I will just select
this one and click the Copy and then Paste commands on the Home tab and now press the
Paste command again for another arrow. Notice how the arrows appear one on top of
the other? I want to rearrange this. To do this, select the object you want to
modify. I want the tail of this arrow to appear below
the head of the first one. To do this, select the Format tab.
In the arrange group, select Send to Back and then choose Send to Back or Send Backward.
Send to Back sends the object to the very back, or very bottom, of the stack of objects.
Send Backward sends the object back one layer. Since we just want this to appear below the
first arrow head, just select Send Backwards. Now we need to arrange this arrow, so we'll
just select it, and click Send to Back, and select Send to Back from the menu.
You can see how this command allowed me to arrange the shapes one on top of the other.
You can also use the Bring to Front command in the same way to order objects such as shapes
and pictures, as well as text boxes. Practice aligning, grouping, and ordering
to see how you can place text on top of objects, pictures inside of objects, or group items
and move them around on your slide.