Powerpoint tips: Combining shapes

Ever wish you could make your own “auto shapes” – want something different like a coloured square with a circular cutout that shows things in layers behind… Powerpoint includes this capacity but Micro$oft hides it from you. This post shows you how to activate this function and use it.

 

 

 

Make “Combine Shapes” accessible: Right click on a blank area on the ribbon or quick-access toolbar, and select ‘customise the ribbon’ or ‘customise the Quick Access Toolbar’. I will illustrate with the QA toolbar. select the Choose commands from : Commands not in the ribbon. Scroll down to Combine shapes, and click the Add button. The combine shapes icon will appear on the QA toolbar.

To use it: Add a shape. Add a second shape. Here I have added a square and then added a circle, all on a slide with a photo background so you can see the effect better. We will make the circle into a hole. Click the Square. Hold down shift to add the circle (the order is important for some combinations). The result – a square with a round hole that shows the background.

The combine shapes menu also includes union, combine and intersect as well as subtract. You can use these to make quite complex shapes from simple shapes.

But there’s more. Right click your shape, and select ‘edit points’. Now you can change your shape by moving points, adding points, deleting points … lots of options.

Here is another example – make male and female symbols from basic shapes: use circles and block arrows to make a male symbol; use 2 circles and a couple of rectangles to make the female symbol. Before combining they are a bit of a mess with the outlines of some shapes overlapping the fill of others. Use union to combine the outer circle and the block arrow; use subtract to make the hollow centre …

You can do similar combinations to make the female symbol…

Now you can use outline and fill to set the fill and border colours and you have nice symbols that you can cut and paste and reuse as you like.