Arranging Objects

Learning Objectives

  • Arrange objects.

At this point, we have learned how to add a variety of items to PowerPoint slides, including different types of images and videos. There are times when you may have multiple objects on a slide together and wish to position them in a certain way. Alternatively, you may wish to position a single item in a very specific fashion. This is called arranging objects on slides. Like many other tasks in PowerPoint, there are automated ways to do this.

  1. The “Arrange” menu is found in the “Drawing” group of the Home tab.
  2. You must select a specific object to arrange. For this example, the image of the flower on the left has been selected.
    A Microsoft Powerpoint is open with a video on the first and only slide there is also an image of a flower to the left of the video. There is a green box highlighting different formatting options and a green arrow pointing at the option to arrange the content on the page.
  3. The dropdown Arrange menu provides you a variety of options. Align will specifically position the selected object somewhere on the slide.
    A Microsoft Powerpoint is open with a video on the first and only slide there is also an image of a flower to the left of the video. A dropdown menu from the arrange feature has opened. In the arrange dropdown menu, a new dropdown menu has appeared from the align feature.

When you have multiple overlapping objects, you can choose which one is in the background or forefront using the Order Objects selections. You should Bring to Front the image you wish to be in the forefront, but keep in mind it will then hide anything it overlaps. Consider the images below.

A Microsoft Powerpoint is open to the first and only slide with an image of a flower showing. A new image of a desert has been inserted to the right of the image of the flower and is not overlapping it.
A Microsoft Powerpoint is open to the first and only slide with an image of a flower overlapping an image of a desert to the right.

If you have multiple objects together on a slide, you can make them into a Group using the “Group Objects” menu. Grouping different objects together turns them into a single object. In this way, they can be moved, aligned, or resized as a unit instead of individually. Note that you can only group the same type of objects together. You can group multiple images together, but you cannot group an image and a video.

Practice Question

Practice Question