Gridlines in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows

PowerPoint's Gridlines help you position your slide objects more precisely, along with Rulers and Guides, Gridlines let you position and snap slide objects in place so that you can easily line a set of slide objects uniformly. Gridlines are intersecting parallel and vertical dotted lines displayed on the slide forming almost a dotted graph-like mesh, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Gridlines on a slide

By default, these gridlines are not visible on your slides in PowerPoint 2013. In this tutorial you'll learn how to show or hide these Gridlines in PowerPoint 2013, to make your work easier when working with complicated slide arrangements.

1. Launch PowerPoint 2013, and open a Blank Presentation as shown in Figure 2. Note that there are no gridlines visible by default.
2. 
   Figure 2: Default PowerPoint interface with no Gridlines visible
2. To enable gridlines, select the View tab of the Ribbon, and make sure you select the Gridlines check-box, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 3.
3. 
   Figure 3: Gridlines check-box selected
4. Conversely, if you want to hide gridlines again, just deselect the Gridlines check-box (refer to Figure 3).
5. Tip: To turn on the visibility of the gridlines, you can use the keyboard shortcut Shift + F9. Use the same shortcut key to toggle it away. Want more keyboard shortcuts? Get a copy of our PowerPoint Keyboard Shortcuts Ebook.
3. Now you can see the gridlines displayed on the slide, as shown in Figure 4.
4. 
   Figure 4: Gridlines made visible on PowerPoint slide
5. Note: Once your gridlines are visible on the Slide Area, you can make them work for you! First, tweak the Snap to Grid settings as per your requirements, and then explore our Working with Snap to Grid tutorial.