Chapter 7: Creating Shapes

Overview

In this chapter you will learn to:

• Draw and modify a shape.

• Change the way a shape looks.

• Align and connect shapes.

• Stack and group shapes.

To emphasize the key points in your presentation, you might want to include shapes in addition to text. The shapes you draw, like the pictures you import from other programs and the text you type, are objects that can be sized , moved, copied , and formatted in a variety of ways to suit your needs.

Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 provides tools for creating several types of shapes, including stars, banners, boxes, lines, circles, and squares. You can also draw free-form shapes of your own. With a little imagination , you will soon discover that there are endless ways to combine shapes to create drawings that can enhance your message. After combining shapes, you can work with shapes individually or as a group.

In this chapter, you ll draw and size shapes, copy and move them, and change the way they look. You ll also align and connect shapes, change their stacking order, and group and ungroup them.

See Also  

Do you need only a quick refresher on the topics in this chapter? See the Quick Reference entries on pages xxxvi “xxxviii.

Important  

 On the CD     Before you can use the practice files in this chapter, you need to install them from the book s companion CD to their default location. See Using the Book s CD-ROM on page xiii for more information.