Create Your Own Picture Bullets in PowerPoint 2010
Author: Geetesh Bajaj
Product/Version: PowerPoint 2010
Date Created: July 15th 2011
Last Updated: July 15th 2011
Excerpt/Capsule: Learn how to create your own picture bullets in PowerPoint 2010.
You have already learned about picture bullets in PowerPoint 2010, and how you can import any picture and use it as a custom bullet. You can also create your own picture bullets to use in presentations, and these can be created right within PowerPoint! Follow these steps to explore this option:
- Launch PowerPoint 2010. Most of the time, PowerPoint will open with
a new slide in a presentation -- PowerPoint 2010 users can change
the slide layout to Blank by selecting Home tab | Layout | Blank.
- Access the Insert tab of the Ribbon, and in the Illustrations group, click the Shapes button to reveal the Shapes gallery. Choose the Oval shape (see Figure 1), and click once on your slide to place a circle. To learn more about drawing circles, see our Draw a Perfect Circle tutorial.

Figure 1: Oval shape selected
- Make sure the circle is selected. Then select the Drawing Tools Format tab of the Ribbon. In this tab, select the More button (down-arrow) next to the Shapes Styles gallery (highlighted in red in Figure 2).

Figure 2: Shape Styles within Drawing Tools Format tab
- This reveals the entire Shape Styles drop-down gallery, as shown in Figure 3. Select any of the available styles to apply it to the selected circle.

Figure 3: Shape Styles drop-down gallery
- With the circle on the slide selected, right-click and select the Save as Picture option in the resultant context menu (see Figure 4).

Figure 4: Save as Picture option
- In the resultant Save as Picture dialog box, choose a location and name for your picture -- also choose a picture format such as PNG that supports transparency (see Figure 5).
Once you are done, click on Save button, and now you can import the picture you just saved to be used as a bullet in PowerPoint.

Figure 5: Save picture as PNG
Tip: Do you want the picture bullet to change in all slides? You can quickly make that customization by working within Slide Master view. We cover the Slide Master in a subsequent tutorial.