Inserting Shapes:

To insert a shape, we select the “Insert” tab in the “Ribbon” and click the “Shapes” button.
This opens a drop-down menu that is divided into different categories.

“Lines”, “Basic Shapes”, “Block Arrows”, “Flowchart”, “Callouts”, “Rectangles”, “Equation Shapes”, “Stars and Banners”, “Action buttons” and “Recently used Shapes” are the various categories.

At the top of the menu, we find the recently used shapes.
And at the bottom, the “New Drawing Canvas”

To add a shape, click it in the drop-down menu.
This closes the menu.

Your mouse pointer is changed to a cross.
Click and drag the mouse button to the place in your slide where you want to insert the shape.
Release the mouse button when you get the right size for your shape.

When you release the mouse, you see that blocks appear on the edges and circles at the corners.
Click and drag on these to resize your shape.

 

The green circle that appears on top of the shape can be used to rotate the shape.
In the “Ribbon”, the “Drawing Tools” appear together with the “Format” contextual tab .

You should try all these different formatting options if you have the time.
 

Selecting a shape:

To select a shape on a slide, click on it.
To select multiple shapes in a slide, keep the “Ctrl” key on your keyboard pressed while you click the different shapes with the mouse.
If you selected multiple shapes and need to ‘de-selected’ one, keep the Ctrl key on your keyboard pressed and click on the selected shape (s) again to ‘de-select’ them.

A second way to select is to click the “Select” button in the “Home” tab in the “Ribbon”, and select “Select objects” from the drop-down menu.
Your mouse pointer changes to a white arrow.
Click and drag it over the objects you wish to select.

The Selection Panel:
The selection panel is a new option available in “PowerPoint” 2007.
The selection panel allows us to view objects, select and order them.

To open the selection pane, click the “Select” button, under the “Home” tab in the “Ribbon” and select the last option which is “Selection Pane”, from the drop-down menu.
This will open the “Selection Pane” on the right side of the application window.
In this panel, we find all our objects which are present in the slide.

The objects in this list appear in the order that they are placed in, in the slide.
The first object is added at the bottom of the list, the last added object is found at the top.

To select an object in this list, click on it.
To select several objects in this list, keep the Ctrl key on your keyboard pressed while you click all other objects in the list.

You can temporarily hide an object in the slide by clicking the eye icon next to the name of the object .
You can hide all the objects in a slide by pressing the ” Hide All ” button and see all objects again by pressing the “Show All” button.

To change the order of an object, select the object in the list and click on the “Bring Forward” arrow or “Send Backward” arrow at the bottom of the pane.

To change the name of an object in the panel, double-click the name of the object.

Featured Courses

• Downloading iPad Apps
• Lesson 1: Introduction to Publisher
• Lesson 65: File Formats