Change One Shape To Another in PowerPoint 2010
Author: Geetesh Bajaj
Product/Version: PowerPoint 2010
Date Created: December 1st 2010
Last Updated: December 1st 2010
Excerpt/Capsule: Learn how to change one shape to another in PowerPoint 2010.
Imagine you have worked on a shape in PowerPoint by applying effects, animation, and a fill. Later you realize that you used a wrong shape, or perhaps the client wants you to change the shape but retain all the effects, animations, and fills! You may want to delete and start over again, and that is a long drawn process -- but you don't have to do that for you can change any existing shape to another by using these steps in PowerPoint 2010:
Tip: You can change multiple shapes from one shape to another if you select them all and follow the steps within this tutorial. For example, you can select 20 star shapes and change them all to triangles at one go. But remember you can also select 20 shapes that are all different (stars, rectangles, arrows, or any other shape) and change them all to one particular shape at one go!
- Select the shape which you want to change (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Select the shape
- This
activates the Drawing Tools Format tab of the Ribbon (refer to Figure
1 above). Within the Insert Shapes group, click the the Edit
Shape button, as shown in Figure
2.
Figure 2: Edit Shape button
- This brings up a small menu. Choose the Change
Shape option (see Figure
3) to bring up a variant of the Shape gallery
-- choose
the shape type you need to
change to (refer to Figure 3 again).
Figure 3: Choose Shape to change
- Note that your
new shape has the same fill, animation, outline, effect, and hyperlink
attributes as the earlier shape -- if you added no animation or hyperlink
to the existing shape, then of course the new shape also won't have
any animation or hyperlink attributes.
Figure 4: Changed shape