Change One Shape Into Another in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac
Author: Geetesh Bajaj
Product/Version: PowerPoint 2011
OS: Mac OS X
Date Created: July 19th 2011
Last Updated: July 19th 2011
Excerpt/Capsule: Learn how to change one shape to another in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.
Let us imagine that your shape in PowerPoint has effects, animations, and fills applied. Later you realize that you used the wrong shape to start with, or perhaps your boss 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 can change any existing shape into another by following these steps in PowerPoint 2011:
Tip: You can change multiple shapes at a time 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: Star Shape selected
- In PowerPoint 2011 for Mac, you will find the option to change the selected shape to another shape only within the SmartArt tab (highlighted in red in Figure 1 above) of the Ribbon, and not the Format tab! I know this sounds crazy, but that's the only way you can change a given shape to another.
Click on the SmartArt tab, and locate the Edit SmartArt group. Within this group, click the Shape button to bring down the Shape gallery that you can see in Figure 2. In this gallery, select any shape to which you want to change the selected shape. In Figure 2 you can see that I have selected the Heart shape.
Figure 2: Shape gallery within Edit SmartArt group
- Once you click on another shape within the Shape gallery, the selected shape changes into the new shape as you can see in Figure 3.Note that the
new shape has the same fill, animation, outline, effect, and hyperlink
attributes as the earlier shape. If the original, selected shape did not have any animation or hyperlink
applied, then of course the new changed shape also won't have
any animation or hyperlink attributes.
Figure 3: Star shape changed to a Heart shape
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