Polish your slides by mastering alignment in PowerPoint

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We’re looking at how you can apply the concept of marginal gains to your PowerPoint presentations. What small improvements can you make to have a big impact on the quality of your slides?

We put together an entire A-Z of essential slide checks, which you’ll find on our blog. We won’t cover the full list here, but first up is A for alignment, which we’re exploring in depth in this month’s Behind the slides newsletter.

Enjoy the read!

A is for alignment

Alignment is a perfect example of where making tiny changes can have a big impact. Polished alignments aren’t that noticeable, but wonky ones can be a big distraction. Here are six expert tips that will help you line up shapes more efficiently and create perfectly balanced layouts with ease.

Give your mouse a chance with smart guides

Alignment is a precision operation. Unfortunately, there aren’t any keyboard shortcuts for alignment in PowerPoint, and mice aren’t famed for their careful, considered movement. You can make things a bit easier, however, by activating smart guides. Right-click an empty space on the slide, select Gid and Guides > Smart Guides, and you’ll have thin lines to help you snap shapes into place and get your mouse under some kind of control.

Tip: Even without specific keyboard shortcuts, you can still speed up your alignment process by learning to multi-select objects efficiently. If you need a refresher on your options and shortcuts for pinpointing your selections, you can check out our past newsletter.

Gain faster access to alignment tools

You’ll find the PowerPoint alignment tools hidden away in the Home tab, under the Arrange menu, then Align, and once you’re there you still need to select the specific tool you need. That’s at least three clicks for one action that you probably need to do several times whenever you make an adjustment to a slide layout.

If you use thinkcell, you have all the alignment and distribution tools accessible from the thinkcell tab. And even if you don't, you can add them to your quick access toolbar, where they're all available with one click and far less mouse movement. That’s a 3x improvement straight away and if you’re a keyboard enthusiast, you can also use quick access toolbar commands with Alt and the relevant number codes.

Tip: Remembering which tools are assigned to which numbers on your quick access toolbar is hard, and reliance on trial and error will slow you down. A smart solution is to order the primary alignment tools to match to the layout of the number pad. If you have Align Top on 8 (up arrow), down on 2, left on 4 and 6 on right, then you’ll be able to align elements quickly and intuitively.

Align objects across slides

As well as alignment of objects within a slide, you also want to ensure consistent positioning throughout the presentation. You don’t want your headlines jumping up and down as you click through your deck.

One way to keep positioning consistent is to work with templates and slide masters. Or, if you’re adding a shape that isn’t in the slide master, copy it from one slide to the other. When you paste it in, it will automatically go to the same position. It’s quick, it’s easy, and it’s accurate.

Tip: You can add individual guides via the right mouse button > Grid and Guides > Add Horizontal/Vertical Guide. Once you’ve added a guide, you can drag it with the mouse to the right position and you’ll have a line you can use for consistent alignment across all slides throughout your presentation. If you want to hide/show existing guides, that’s Alt+F9.

Turn off align to slide

Sometimes you select two objects and hit one of the align buttons, but they both jump unexpectedly to the side of the slide. You’re not going crazy. There is a toggle in PowerPoint under Home > Arrange > Align that is sometimes set to Align to Slide instead of Align to Selected Objects. Change this setting and your objects should align as normal again.

Tip: If you’re trying to change the alignment behavior but the Align to Selected Objects is grayed out, it’s probably because you need to have at least two objects selected first. Select two shapes together and then the option will be accessible.

Do not autofit

One setting that can wreak havoc with your alignment is textboxes with the option ‘Resize shape to fit text.’ The best way to stay in control of your layout is to ensure that all shapes are set to ‘Do not autofit.’ That way, if a text is too long, you’ll spot it straight away and you won’t be caught out by any silent shapeshifting.

Tip: To ensure all new shapes have the desired setting, you can simply right-click a shape that is set to ‘Do not autofit’ and choose Set as Default Shape from the context menu.

Watch out for text alignment within shapes

Even if the borders of two shapes are top-aligned, the text within them can still appear off if one is longer than the other. To solve this, you should adjust the text alignment of the shapes, too. For example, the text in your presentation headings should be aligned left, top. This will ensure that one- and two-line headings are still anchored to the same position.

Tip: You usually want to apply the equivalent vertical text alignment to the alignment of the shapes themselves. If the shapes are bottom-aligned, set the vertical text alignment to bottom and you’ll see the text tied to the edge of your shape that is most relevant for your slide’s overall layout.

That’s a wrap for this edition of Behind the slides. Don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an update, and if you’re not doing so, you can also follow us on LinkedIn for more news, company updates and PowerPoint tips.