Arrange and Align Elements in PowerPoint

4 minutes read

@ slidesgo.com

Images, icons, text boxes, and shapes constitute the elements of the slides in a presentation. Keeping them properly aligned and arranged will help you grab your audience’s attention and convey your message in an effective manner. In this tutorial, we’ll teach you step by step how to arrange and align the elements in PowerPoint.

Aligning an Object

To align a single object in your PowerPoint presentation, follow these steps:

Open your PowerPoint presentation.
Select the object you want to align.
Drag it around on the slide. You’ll see some little lines—these are the guides, which you can use as a reference to align the selected object with respect to the other elements on the slide.

Aligning Two or More Objects

To align multiple objects, do the following:

Open your PowerPoint presentation and select multiple objects. To do this, click on one object, hold the Shift key, and then click on other elements to add them to your selection.

Once you’ve selected them, go to the Home tab and click on Arrange → Align → Align Selected Objects. This method takes the current positions of the elements into account for alignment.

You can choose from several alignment options:
- Align Left: Aligns selected objects to the left side.
- Align Center: Vertically centers the selected objects.
- Align Right: Aligns selected objects to the right side.
- Align Top: Aligns selected objects to the top.
- Align Middle: Horizontally centers selected elements to the slide.
- Align Bottom: Aligns selected elements to the bottom.
These options are also available in the Align drop-down menu located in the Arrange group on the Shape Format tab (note that this tab only appears when objects are selected).

Aligning Two or More Objects to the Slide

To align multiple objects to the slide, follow these instructions:

Open your PowerPoint presentation.
Select multiple objects by clicking one object, holding Shift, and clicking on additional elements.

Go to the Home tab and click on Arrange → Align → Align to Slide.

You can then select from the following options:
- Align Left: Aligns selected objects to the left side of the slide.
- Align Center: Vertically centers selected objects to the slide.
- Align Right: Aligns selected objects to the right side of the slide.
- Align Top: Aligns selected elements to the top part of the slide.
- Align Middle: Horizontally centers selected elements to the slide.
- Align Bottom: Aligns selected elements to the bottom part of the slide.
As mentioned earlier, these options can also be found in the Align drop-down menu in the Arrange group on the Shape Format tab.

Distributing Selected Objects

To distribute objects evenly, do the following:

Open your PowerPoint presentation and select multiple objects by holding Shift while clicking each object.

Once selected, navigate to Home tab and click Arrange → Align → Align Selected Objects. This will distribute the objects while considering their current positions.

You can choose to:
- Distribute Horizontally: Evenly distributes the selected objects horizontally.
- Distribute Vertically: Evenly distributes the selected objects vertically.
These options are accessible through the Align drop-down menu, found in the Arrange group on the Shape Format tab.

Distributing Objects to the Slide

To distribute objects across the entire slide, follow these steps:

Open your PowerPoint presentation.
Select two or more elements by holding Shift while clicking each one.

Navigate to Home tab and click Arrange → Align → Align to Slide.

Next, you can choose to:
- Distribute Horizontally: Evenly distributes the selected objects horizontally across the slide.
- Distribute Vertically: Evenly distributes the selected objects vertically across the slide.
These options are also in the Align drop-down menu within the Arrange group on the Shape Format tab.

Arranging an Object

To arrange objects in your presentation, do the following:

Open your PowerPoint presentation.
Select the object you wish to arrange.
Go to the Home tab and click on the Arrange drop-down arrow.

You can choose from several options:

Bring to Front: Places the selected object on top of all other elements.
Send to Back: Moves the selected object behind all other elements.
Bring Forward: Moves the selected object up one layer in the stacking order.
Send Backward: Moves the selected object down one layer in the stacking order.

These options are available in the Align drop-down menu located in the Arrange group on the Shape Format tab.