470 Chapter 16 Add Simple Visual Enhancements
Drawing Shapes.
To emphasize the key points in your presentation, you might want to include shapes in
addition to text. PowerPoint provides tools for creating several types of shapes, including
stars, banners, boxes, lines, circles, and squares. With a little imagination, you’ll soon
discover ways to create drawings by combining shapes.
To create a shape in PowerPoint, you click the Shapes button in the Illustrations group
on the Insert tab, click the shape you want to insert, and then drag the crosshair pointer
across the slide.
Tip To draw a circle or a square, click the Oval or a Rectangle shape, and hold down the Shift
key while you drag.
After you draw the shape, it is surrounded by a set of handles, indicating that it is
selected. (You can select a shape at any time by simply clicking it.) The handles serve
the following purposes:
● You can drag the pale blue sizing handles to change the size of a shape.
● If a shape has a yellow diamond-shaped adjustment handle next to one of the sizing
handles or elsewhere on the shape, the shape is adjustable. You can use this handle
to alter the appearance of the shape without changing its size.
● You can drag the green rotating handle to adjust the angle of rotation of a shape.Sizing handlesRotating handleAdjustment handleThe three types of shape handles.You can copy or cut a selected shape or multiple shapes and then paste the shapes
elsewhere in the same presentation, in another presentation, or in any Office program.