Layered Objects on a crowded slide
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| Layered Objects |
There has to be a better way. You can use the keyboard shortcuts Tab and Shift+Tab to cycle forward and backward through the stack of objects until you can see that the selection handles are around the one you want. Or, you can press Alt+F10 and turn on the...
Selection and Visibility Pane
There’s a control to turn this on and off on the Home tab
but it’s easily missed. The Selection and Visibility Pane lists all the objects
on your slide and you use it to identify and work on any object. Just click the
Hide All button and then start clicking the eyes to the right to show
selected objects, you’ll soon find the one you want. Make your changes, click
the Show All button and you’re done. It’s so easy when you can see what
you’re doing.
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| Selection and Visibility Pane ALT+F10 |
An object named something like Blue Box or Red Star is a lot easier to deal with than Rectangle 5. To rename an object, click the current name in the pane and replace the text.
Ruler, Gridlines and Guides
Are you still eyeballing objects on your slides to line them
up? PowerPoint’s Smart Guides pop up when you are aligning objects and are a
great help but for a slick and professional appearance you need to arrange your
objects with precision. You need to see what you’re doing and see where things
are. In short, you need gridlines, guides or your ruler, maybe all three.
You’ll find them on the View tab or you can press the shortcut keys:
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| Rulers, Gridlines and Guides |
Press Shift+F9 to show or hide the gridlines. Press Alt+F9 to show or hide guides. Press Alt+Shift+F9 to show or hide the ruler. The ruler appears around the top and left of the slide and is ideal for sizing and positioning, the grid is a design grid used to precisely align objects in relation to each other and the guides give you your centre lines.
Moving, Resizing, Rotating and Nudging Objects
You can use your mouse to move objects around but for fine
control you should use the arrow keys on your keyboard. Click the object and
then press any of the keys to move left, right, up or down. Hold down the Ctrl
key while you press the arrow keys to nudge—move the shape in smaller
increments.
Shortcuts for Resizing and Rotating
Press Shift+Right Arrow or Shift+Left Arrow to enlarge or reduce the selected shape horizontally.
Press Shift+Up Arrow or Shift+Down Arrow to
enlarge or reduce the selected shape vertically.
Press Alt+Right Arrow to rotate the selected shape to
the right.
Press Alt+ Left Arrow to rotate the selected shape to
the left.
Formatting Text in Text Boxes
Are you formatting all the text in the text box or only a
particular word or phrase in the text? If you are formatting all the text then
there’s no need to drag across the text. Just click on the box and apply your
formatting. Only select the text inside the box when you want to format just a
part of it. You certainly do not want to try to select the text and end up
moving the entire text box. Of course, that’s exactly what everybody does and
mighty irritating is it too!
You need to be aware of your current selection. Look at the
border of the text box—a solid line means the object itself is selected, a
broken line means the text inside is selected. Either click the border of the
box to select the object or click inside the text area to select the text. If
you do this frequently then try remembering the following shortcut keys: Esc to select the text box when you have the
text selected inside it. Enter to select the text inside the text box
when you have the text box selected.
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| Text in the text box selected and the text box itself selected |
Colour Matching with the Eyedropper
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| Colour matching |
As a design tool PowerPoint has definitely needed this for years but it was only introduced with PowerPoint 2013 so you will be disappointed with this one if you have an earlier version. PowerPoint 2013 features the Eyedropper which makes colour matching a breeze. You can match colours not only in your presentation but to any other colours on your screen.
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| The Eyedropper control |
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| Eyedropper cursor and RGB values |
As you move your pointer around the screen a live preview of the colour appears. Hover or pause on a colour to see its RGB (Red Green Blue) colour coordinates. Click on the colour you want. To cancel without picking a colour, press Esc.
Matching the colours of PowerPoint objects on your slide to
something outside of PowerPoint is just as easy. Once again, select the object
that you want to colour match and, holding down your mouse’s primary button,
drag to move the Eyedropper cursor outside of the PowerPoint window. You can
now match any colour that you see on your screen, release the mouse to apply
the desired colour.
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