Arranging Objects in PowerPoint 2016
During this Microsoft PowerPoint 2016 training tutorial video, we will demonstrate how to arrange objects–align left, align center, align right, align top, align middle, align bottom, distribute space horizontally, distribute vertically, or align to slide. Other points being discussed in this video are guides and gridlines, send picture backward, and bring picture forward.
Okay good to see you again. We’re still in module six where we’re talking about formatting our objects and now we’re going to talk in section four here about arranging objects, making them look nice and neat on our slide. So let me show you how that’s done.
Okay so we’re here on slide four and we’ve got these five objects. Remember these arrows are an object as well. That’s why I said there’s five objects. Now I want to do some things like I want to make them look a little bit nicer. I want to center them on the slide, things like that.
Now a first thing is this. I want to go ahead and take this formatting and put it inside of Campus and Graduates as well so they have some sort of similarity. Don’t forget that you can always use Format Painter to copy your formatting from one object to another. So I’ve selected the object I want to copy from.
I’m going to click Format Painter on the Home tab and then click inside the object I want to copy to. And now you can see they have the exact same formatting. A little trick with this. If you know that you’re going to copy this to multiple objects when you first click Format Painter double click it and it will stay on until you turn it off. And you would turn it off by hitting Escape on your keyboard or go back and clicking on Format Painter again.
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Now I’m going to line these up. So the first thing I’m going to do is select them all. So I’m going to draw my net. Now I want to line them up let’s say with the top of this particular one, Graduates. Now first of all notice that I’ve got these arrows selected as well and I’m going to deselect them just by holding Control because if I leave them selected they’ll also line up at the top and I don’t want them to do that.
Now you can get to the options for alignment a couple of different ways. If you’re on the Home tab you’ll see there’s Arrange. And if you’re under Arrange you want to choose this Align option. Now when you’re aligning objects if you’re going to line them up and down you’re going to use these three.
These would let you find the object furthest to the left and line them up, the center or the right. If you’re going to line up objects across use these three and you can see from the little picture there. You can align the top, the middle or the bottom. I’m going to align the top. And now you’ll see they’re all lined up exactly alike.
Now if the arrows happen to be not lined up themselves. Maybe they look something like this then I can do the same thing with just the arrows. I would go back to Arrange, Align and I’d align probably in this case the middle and there they are. So you can always line your objects that way.
Now another thing is the spacing. You can kind of see that the spacing here is not the same as here and not the same as this or this either. So I’m going to select all the objects and here’s how you line the spacing up so the spacing is exactly the same between all of your objects. You’re going to go back to Arrange, you’re going to choose Align and this time choose Distribute horizontally.
Notice if your objects were up and down you could distribute vertically. So I’m going to distribute horizontally and now every object has the exact same amount of spacing between it. It looks a lot nicer like this.
Now the next thing I want to do is I’d like to center these on my slide because right now they’re kind of over to the left. Now what you can’t do is select the objects and hit the centered button. That’s not going to work because that’s just the text within your object. So let me show you how to turn on the guides that will help you when you’re trying to line objects up.
If you go to the tab that says View you’re going to see a checkbox that says Guides. And you can see your guides right here. Now typically they automatically are on zero and zero this way. The reason I moved mine is because it was over here on the two. See how you can move the guides anywhere you want them to be? Now technically if you think about this one left to right this center control handle is the center of my objects from left to right.
So I can grab any one of these since they’re all selected and drag them. And as soon as this control handle is right on the line then I know they’re centered. Now if you’re having trouble getting them right on the line you can get them close and then use your arrow keys that go left, right, up, or down to help you line up your objects. But now you can see that they’re lined up perfectly from left to right.
Now if I’m trying to line these up in the middle of the slide altogether I’m going to grab these and drag them down like this. And I’m trying to put this center control handle on that line is what I’m trying to do. So I’m going to go down a little bit just like this, perfect, and then I’ll go left a little bit just like this. And now they’re lined up perfectly from top to bottom and left to right. So that’s the center of my slides.
Now let me just show you the grids real quick. I’ll take the guides off for a second. Here’s your gridlines. They look like smaller little squares on your screen. Now gridlines just let you line up objects that are smaller.
Maybe you’re not trying to put them in the center of the slide but you just want to line things up. You can actually take an object and move it as close to a gridline as possible and then line them up that way. So those are going to help you when you’re working with lining up your objects.
Okay I’m going to go ahead and turn the gridlines off.
Now let’s say that I want to have some picture behind these objects just to make them stand out a little bit more. So I’m going to go and grab a picture that I’ve got. So I’m going to go to Insert Pictures and let’s say I grab this one here. Now right now if you notice it’s sitting on top of these objects. So objects can layer as it’s called. And you have the ability to move them backwards or forwards in the stack.
Now before I do that I want to go ahead and make this a little bit bigger just so that it’s going to look a little bit nicer when we get it here. And let’s just say that I want to do something like this. I’m going to go ahead and make it much bigger.
Now see how it’s sitting on top of my objects and I can’t see them? Now if you have your objects selected you can use under your Picture Tools contextual tab the bring forward or send backward options. So I’m going to send this backwards.
Now a couple of things. See the dropdown arrow? If you send something backwards it goes one layer at a time. See how if I send backwards I’m going to see one object at a time that pulls forward? Now I could have said under the Send Backwards to send to the back. And that moves it all the way to the back of the stack. Now you might have also noticed that sometimes this Selection Pane pops up.
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All this is is instead of me clicking to select an object it allows you to click here to select an object if you wanted to do it that way. That’s all that is. So I’m going to go ahead and close that out.
But see now how I’ve got something behind my objects? Now we talked a lot about the fact that you can actually make objects a little bit darker, lighter, things like that. We’re going to be working with pictures in module seven and I’m going to show you how to lighten this up back here so these stand out a little bit more. So you can always work with your objects and arrange them like that.
So let’s go ahead and talk over in section five here about how to group these.
Simon Calder
Chris “Simon” Calder was working as a Project Manager in IT for one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious cultural institutions, LACMA.He taught himself to use Microsoft Project from a giant textbook and hated every moment of it. Online learning was in its infancy then, but he spotted an opportunity and made an online MS Project course - the rest, as they say, is history!
