Power Point® All?in?One Desk Reference For Dummies®

Chapter 1. Drawing Shapes, Lines, and Other Objects

In This Chapter

• Drawing lines and arrows on slides

• Placing connectors between shapes

• Creating and modifying shapes

• Exchanging one shape for another

• Using shapes as text boxes

• Creating WordArt images

Whether you know it or not, PowerPoint comes with drawing commands for drawing lines, arrows, shapes, block arrows, stars, banners, and callout shapes. The drawing commands are meant to bring out the artist in you. Use them to decorate your slides, fashion your own charts, mark your slides with stars or thunderbolts, or illustrate difficult concepts and ideas. A picture is worth a thousand words, so they say, and the drawing commands give you a chance to say it without having to write a thousand words.

Not everyone takes advantage of the drawing commands, yet they are fairly easy to use, and you can make your slide presentation stand out in a crowd by carefully sprinkling a few lines and shapes on your slides. Lines and shapes give you a wonderful opportunity to exercise your creativity. They give you the chance to make your presentations different from everybody else's.

These pages explain how to draw lines and arrows, draw connections between shapes, and draw ovals, squares, and other shapes, as well as WordArt images. You also find out how to exchange one shape for another and use a shape like a text box. (The next chapter explains how to manipulate shapes after you draw them.)

The Basics: Drawing Lines and Shapes

To create a line, arrow, triangle, ...