shapes

Using PowerPoint’s Shape Merge (1)

Christie was tasked with creating a 3-part blog series of creative, real-world, presentation design examples using PowerPoint’s Shape Merge tools (see this post on the Shape Merge Tools).

TARGET
Goal is to create a single PowerPoint shape with the concentric circles of a classic bullseye target. Note: With the Shape Merge tools, the first selected shape will make a difference in which item will be removed.

Shape 1

Shape styling – gradient fill:

Shape(s) 2: series of 4 circles with thick outlines (color does not matter).

Move Shape 1 (red circle) under Shape 2 and align all:

Select shapes (this is important – select Red circle 1st) and the Shape Merge COMBINE tool:

Final touches – bevel, gradient fill, shadow or any other effect styling can be applied to this new SINGLE SHAPE (I added the gradient fill in the original shape, but added a drop shadow after):

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-10T09:40:53-07:00May 23rd, 2014|Tutorial|

Shape Merge in PowerPoint

A very useful, and perhaps underutilized feature in PowerPoint is the Shape Merge. This may be due to the fact that pre-Office 2013, it was actually a very difficult to locate feature, remaining hidden to many users unaware of its existence.

Add the Shape Merge Tools to PowerPoint 2010
In PowerPoint 2010, you have to jump through a few hoops to make the feature accessible:

1. Right click on the ribbon and click customize.
2. In the right hand column, select Tools Tabs. Create a custom group in the “Drawing Tools” section titles “Shape Merge.”
3. In the left-hand column, select “Commands Not in the Ribbon.”
4. Scroll down until you see the Shape Tools: Combine, Intersect, Subtract, and Union. Click the add button between the two column to add them to the custom group we’ve just created.
5. Now when working with shapes, you should have the options depicted below in your Drawing Tools ribbon.
6. Enjoy easily creating complex shapes!

The Shape Merge Tools are Already in PowerPoint 2013
When working with shapes in PowerPoint 2013, you’ll find the Shape Merge tools are already available for use on the Drawing Tools ribbon.

Putting our New Tools to Work
Using these tools is fairly straight forward. You simple click on one shape, hold shift+click on a second shape. It’s worth noting that the first click is the primary shape, and the second click will be the subtraction shape.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-10T09:41:40-07:00May 19th, 2014|Personal|

Creating Quote Mark Graphics in PowerPoint 2013

PowerPoint 2010 introduced the very great “Merge Shape” tools (see this post for details). With this toolset, editable vector shapes can be can be created directly in PowerPoint – something I refer to as “Illustrator 2.0.” With PowerPoint 2013, it includes the ability to convert text to vector, which is what we will use to create the stylized quote mark graphics for a complete PowerPoint workflow.

quote mark graphics 1

1. Add text in PowerPoint.

quote mark graphics 2

2. Add PPT shape, and send to back behind text.

quote mark graphics 3

3. Select text and shape. On FORMAT ribbon >> MERGE SHAPES >> INTERSECT

quote mark graphics 4

4. The text is no longer editable, as it is now shapes. Right click and select EDIT POINTS just like any shape in PPT.

quote mark graphics 5
quote mark graphics 6
quote mark graphics 7

5. Stylize with no fill, light grey outline, drop shadow effect described in this post.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-10T09:48:18-07:00March 14th, 2014|PowerPoint, Tutorial|

PowerPoint Outline – inside/outside/middle ???

A stroke and an outline are the same thing, but called different things based on the program being used. It is a line around the perimeter. The line can be any color, even a gradient of colors and any width. But PowerPoint has a flaw in its outline/stroke feature:

When you apply strokes to shapes in Illustrator or Photoshop, you have the option to align the stroke to the outside, inside, or center of the shape:

In PowerPoint, the stroke is automatically applied to the center of a PowerPoint, or vector, shape:

However, with inserted images, the stroke gets applied to the outside:

And for text, the stroke is applied to the center:

This makes it difficult if you are trying to align shapes with images, the strokes don’t align even if they are the same weight simply because PPT aligns to the edge of the shape/image and now the same size elements with the same width stroke are different sizes, because on one the stroke makes the shape wider than the other. With the text, the actual text starts to disappear (above example is the base text and then a 10pt stroke applied – which almost completely eliminates the black text). There is not a solution for PowerPoint as of PPT 2013, but we can hope for user control over the placement (inside-outside-center) by the designer to improve PowerPoint.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-10T10:33:55-07:00June 24th, 2013|Resource/Misc, Templates/Assets|

Creating a PowerPoint Shamrock

Working with PowerPoint shapes, the shape merge and edit points tools, and some gradient fills, 3D and other effects, Kristen, a TLC Creative Services designer, created this PowerPoint shamrock.
[youtube src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/DDtBgQCodDI?rel=0″]

Download the final slide here 200KB

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-16T08:41:53-07:00March 13th, 2013|Resource/Misc|

Help – This Shape is Stuck in the Chart

There is a good reason for this feature, but for most it seems to be bug. Which is it, depends on your preference.

Here is the scenario. A chart is on a slide:

With the chart selected, you decide to add a callout box to highlight the import data point in the cart.

The new shape is inserted, but within the chart boundaries. Note: The chart is still selected while the shape is selected.

The new callout shape can be edited and moved – but it can only move within the chart boundaries.

The newly inserted shape has become part of the chart. If the chart is moved, the shape moves. If the chart is deleted, the shape is deleted. But the shape does not interact with the chart, the chart styling options do not change the new shape, and the chart animations do not animate the new shape. For some, this is a feature (ability to tie new shapes to a chart). For others, it is a bug (they did not want the shape tied to the chart).

If you want the shape outside of the chart, the easiest fix is to select the shape (select the chart, then select the shape in the chart) >> copy >> delete >> unselect the chart >> paste.

Now the slide has a chart and a separate shape.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-16T09:07:54-07:00September 19th, 2012|PowerPoint, Tutorial|

PPT 2013 – Shape Combine Tools

PowerPoint 2007 improved the shape edit tools – ie. Bezier lines (see this Aug. 2009 blog post). While not perfect and very simple – compared to “real” vector editing applications like Adobe Illustrator – they were a great addition to PowerPoint and made lots of design needs available inside PowerPoint.

PowerPoint 2010 added another shape edit toolset called “Combine Shape.” They were a great move forward in developing custom vector images inside PowerPoint. But, the real issue was no one knew the tools were there as you had to manually add them to the ribbon. For PowerPoint 2013, Microsoft has “surfaced the feature” – which means it is now on the ribbon by default.

But the default ribbon tools in the “Shape Combine” section do not offer all of the tools – including a new feature that is great! Here is my sample slide with 3 rectangles.

I am going to access the Shape Combine tools using the MERGE SHAPES drop down menu on the Format tab.

First up is the UNION tool, which takes all 3 selected shapes and creates 1 custom shape (Note: The blue shape was the first selected, so the new shape uses its styling):

When you edit this new shape, each corner is editable over the single custom shape:

Second option in the MERGE SHAPES is the COMBINE tool. This is 1 shape again, but identifies the overlapping sections and knocks them out to create a unique shape:

Again, when you edit this shape with the EDIT POINTS, it is a single image, with each corner an editable point – and a few unusual edit points:

Third in the menu is something new – FRAGMENT. This has some real power and will eliminate many trips to Adobe Illustrator or lots of time using PowerPoint’s Edit Points tool to create custom shapes. Every overlapping section becomes a unique shape. I quickly selected each and added different fill colors for each to make it easy to see the result.

INTERSECT is next and it identifies the overlapping sections where all selected shapes overlap and removes all but the overlap:

And last in the Merge Shapes menu is SUBTRACT which again identifies all of the overlap sections and based on the first shape selected deletes the overlaps:

So if you did not know of the Shape Combine tools in PPT 2010, or if you have used them and now are excited about the FRAGMENT tool, PowerPoint 2013 is certain to prove more powerful in creating custom shapes!

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-16T09:11:36-07:00August 27th, 2012|PowerPoint|

PPT 2013 – Equidistant with the New Smart Guides

Smart Guides were introduced in PowerPoint 2010 and are a great feature. PowerPoint 2013 has made the good tool even more usable. Smart Guides can now visually show when shapes are equally spaced apart from one another.

This feature is easier to see than explain, so here is a demo showing 6 boxes being aligned and equally spaced (and another great selection of background music).
[youtube src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/vZmppYSsuhI?rel=0″]

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-16T09:14:48-07:00August 15th, 2012|PowerPoint|

Shape Locker Add-in (Something We Have All Been Asking For!)

Last week, Excel and PowerPoint add-in developer Chirag at OfficeOne Solutions released Shape Locker. It took me only reading the description and who the developer was to know it was the answer to a lot of project requests – and this add-in does not disappoint!

Shape Locker is simply listed as a PowerPoint add-in to “Lock shape position, size, rotation, text and more with Shape Locker.” And it simply does exactly that! After downloading and installing, PowerPoint adds a new “Design Tools” tab.

There is only one button for the add-in. Select a shape in a presentation, go to the DESIGN TOOLS tab and click the LOCK SHAPES button.

The add-in is controlled through a single dialog box. Check the options desired, click OK and you are done.

Here are my test slides:

Slide 1 = is completely editable.
Slide 2 = I have applied different Shape Locker options to each text bar
You can download these slides to text the results here (57 KB .pptx)

———————–

The first bar has all editing options disabled, so you can select the shape, but do nothing to it (move, resize, change colors, edit text, etc.). Here are the Shape Locker settings applied:

For the second text bar, I left the text editing and disabled all other options, so you can change the words but not move/resize/re-color/etc. the shape.

On the 3rd bar, it is the opposite of the previous. The shape can be adjusted (move, recolor, resize, etc.), but the text cannot be modified.

And for the final text bar, I simply used the option to disable the ability to select the shape to completely lock it from any edits.

This is the functionality that users (especially myself) have been asking for since PPT 2000. But it does have a few downsides:
– Only 1 shape at a time can be locked. So if you want to lock a full presentation (or most of a presentation), it is going to take some time to click on each shape and apply the Shape Locker settings.
– To unlock a shape, it is also a time consuming process. Select a shape, open the Shape Locker dialog, uncheck the lock settings – for each shape, 1 at a time. Note: If the disable selection option (used in the final bar of the test slide) is used, that shape cannot be selected and cannot be unlocked (ie. It is permanently a part of that slide).
– Any computer with Shape Locker installed can unlock shapes.
– This add-in specifically says it works with PPT 2010 (32-bit and 64-bit) and PPT 2007. The add-in is not available in PPT 2003 and if a presentation with locked shapes is opened in PPT 2003, there are some unpredictable results. Here is the same test slide opened in PPT 2003 and among other things, if the text has been locked, it does not show up.

I was able to ask Chirag about a few issues and feature requests. The good news is a few features are already in the works that will resolve a few of the tedious use aspects and also add even more power to this fantastic add-in!

You can get the Shape Locker add-in from the OfficeOne site here. And if you first go to my friend Geetesh’s Indezine site, that review has a 50% off promo code (until August 31, 2012).

Last, fellow PowerPoint MVP Steve Rindsberg of PPTools offered this fun trivia about the Shape Locker add-in:
Q – “Why do they call it Shape Locker when it lets you lock placeholders, text boxes, video clips, and pictures as well?”
A – Because when coding everything on a slide is a Shape; placeholders, text boxes, videos, pictures, sounds, etc.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-16T09:18:42-07:00July 30th, 2012|Software/Add-Ins|

PPT Halloween Pumpkin

Using the Shape Combine/Subtract/Union tools TLC Creative designer, Jennifer, developed this great pumpkin entirely from standard PPT shapes.
[youtube src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/yiD1hSN3cdM?rel=0″]

The development was basically 30 steps, which we captured as individual slides to create the video directly from PPT.

Here is what the slide looks like, which you can download here (47K) .

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-16T09:46:40-07:00October 31st, 2011|Portfolio, Tutorial|
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