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Nudge and Move Shapes in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac

Author: Geetesh Bajaj

Product/Version: Microsoft PowerPoint 2011
OS: Mac OS X

Date Created: December 8th 2011
Last Updated: December 8th 2011

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Excerpt/Capsule: Learn how to nudge and move shapes in PowerPoint 2011.

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When we talk about move and nudge in this tutorial, we do not mean just selecting a shape and dragging it somewhere else on the slide, although we discuss that too! Nudging a shape or any other slide object is essentially moving it just a wee bit using the arrow keys on your keyboard rather than the mouse. Move is different in that it is more of a super-nudge, and you can use the mouse to move rather than just nudge with keyboard keys. PowerPoint provides more than one way to nudge or move any selected shape or slide object:

1. Select the shape, and press any of the four arrow keys on the keyboard to nudge the shape towards any of the four directions: top, right, bottom, or left.
   
   
2. To move the selected shape in even smaller increments, hold down the Control key while you press the arrow keys. Sometimes you may find that there is no real difference between pressing the arrow keys while holding the Control key (or not), but there is a difference, especially when you are trying to reduce or increase the empty space between two adjacent slide objects.
   
   
3. To move the shape anywhere around the slide, select and drag it on or off the slide, as shown in Figure 1.
   
   
   Figure 1: Selected shape being moved by dragging
   
   
4. To move the shape in a straight line, select the shape and then hold the Shift key. Now, drag it horizontally or vertically as required (see Figure 2).
   
   
   Figure 2: Selected shape being moved vertically in a straight line
   
   
5. To nudge or move the selected shape in an exact coordinate position on the slide, right-click it and select the Format Shape option from the contextual menu as shown in Figure 3.
   
   
   Figure 3: Format Shape option selected
   
   
6. This will launch the Format Shape dialog box, select the Position option in the sidebar to bring up the position options, as shown in Figure 4 and explained below:
   
   • Position on slide | Horizontal: Type in or use the increase / decrease buttons to change the horizontal position of a shape.
     
     
   • Position on slide | Vertical: Type in or use the increase / decrease buttons to change the vertical position of a shape.
     
     
     Figure 4: Position on slide options within the Format Shape dialog box
     
     For both the options, you can use the From drop-down list -- by default all values are calculated from the Top Left Corner, but there is one more option that can be chosen to move or nudge from the Center of the slide, as shown in the drop-down list in Figure 5.
     
     
     Figure 5: Nudge From drop-down list
     
7. Save your presentation.