In addition to text placeholders, PowerPoint provides a variety of objects that you can use to enhance the visual appearance of your slides. These include AutoShapes, text boxes, clip art, and photographs. You can also insert your own pictures.
PowerPoint's basic drawing tools enable you to create squares, circles, rectangles, ovals, and straight lines drawn at any angle.
You draw a shape by first selecting it on the Drawing toolbar, and then dragging diagonally on your slide to define the size of the shape.
If you don't like a shape you drew, select it and press [Delete] to remove it from your slide, or click Undo <a onClick="window.open('/olcweb/cgi/pluginpop.cgi?it=gif::::/sites/dl/free/0072254440/169695/Undo.gif','popWin', 'width=NaN,height=NaN,resizable,scrollbars');" href="#"><img valign="absmiddle" height="16" width="16" border="0" src="/olcweb/styles/shared/linkicons/image.gif"> (1.0K)</a>.
Hold down [Shift] while drawing a line or other shape to constrain it. Constraining a shape makes it perfectly symmetrical, for example, a circle or a square, or it can make a line perfectly straight.
Hold down [Ctrl] while drawing a shape to make it grow from the center instead of from one edge.
Change the size of a drawn object by dragging one of its sizing handles (small white circles on its border) with a two-pointed arrow <a onClick="window.open('/olcweb/cgi/pluginpop.cgi?it=gif::::/sites/dl/free/0072254440/169695/TwoPointedArrow.gif','popWin', 'width=NaN,height=NaN,resizable,scrollbars');" href="#"><img valign="absmiddle" height="16" width="16" border="0" src="/olcweb/styles/shared/linkicons/image.gif"> (0.0K)</a>.
To preserve an object's proportions when resizing it, hold down [Shift] while dragging a corner sizing handle.
Move a drawn object by pointing to it and dragging the four-pointed arrow <a onClick="window.open('/olcweb/cgi/pluginpop.cgi?it=gif::::/sites/dl/free/0072254440/169695/arrow.gif','popWin', 'width=NaN,height=NaN,resizable,scrollbars');" href="#"><img valign="absmiddle" height="16" width="16" border="0" src="/olcweb/styles/shared/linkicons/image.gif"> (0.0K)</a> when it appears.
AutoShapes are predefined shapes that are organized into several categories. To draw an AutoShape, select the shape you want, and then drag the crosshair pointer. After an AutoShape is drawn, you can change it to a different shape.
When an AutoShape is selected, text that you key appears inside the shape.
Use the Clip Art task pane to search for clip art. If you are connected to the Internet, the task pane's Search command will automatically search the Microsoft Office Design Gallery Live.
To see a menu of clip art options, point to a clip art thumbnail in the Clip Art task pane, and then click the vertical gray bar that appears on the right side of the thumbnail (or right-click the thumbnail).
Using the Cut, Copy, and Paste commands, you can easily move or copy clip art or other images from one slide to another or from one presentation to another.
Pictures and drawn objects can be inserted directly into slide masters or can be copied from another location and pasted onto slide masters.
Resize a clip art image by dragging one of its sizing handles. If you want to preserve proportions, drag a corner handle. If you want to distort the proportions, drag one of the side handles.
Use the Picture toolbar to adjust a picture's brightness, contrast, color depth, and other picture attributes.
Clip art images (vectors, bitmaps, or scanned images) can be cropped. Cropping is trimming away edges of a picture, much like using scissors to cut out a picture from a newspaper or magazine.
WordArt enables you to create special effects with text that are not possible with standard text-formatting tools.
WordArt is modified by using the WordArt Gallery to change its style, by changing its shape, and by editing its text. All these options and many more are available on the WordArt toolbar.
