Guides in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac

Like rulers, guides in PowerPoint allow you to position and snap your slide objects in place. When you enable guides in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac, you see one horizontal and one vertical guide, as shown in Figure 1, below. Typically, these guides are blue in color.

Figure 1: Guides on PowerPoint slide

To enable these guides, you choose the View | Guides | Static Guides option, as shown highlighted red within Figure 2, below.

Figure 2: Static and Dynamic Guides options

As you can see in Figure 2, above, the Guides sub-menu provides options to enable two types of guides: Dynamic and Static, you already saw how Static guides look like in Figure 1, previously on this page. Dynamic guides on the other hand are not visible all the time. We will explore them later in this tutorial.

By default, guides may not be enabled on your slide. Enabling them though can help while working with positioning any of your slide objects. Also, if you need to position certain objects at the same position on successive slides, guides can be an amazing help. In subsequent tutorials, we will explore techniques that help work with guides, or even create new guides.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to get started with these two types of guides in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac:

Dynamic Guides

1. Launch PowerPoint. Typically, the program opens a new presentation with a blank slide, as shown in Figure 3, below. As you can see, there are no guides visible by default.
2. 
   Figure 3: Default PowerPoint interface with no guides visible
2. To make the Dynamic guides visible, select the View | Guides | Dynamic Guides menu option, as shown in Figure 4, below.
3. 
   Figure 4: Dynamic Guides option within the Guides sub-menu
3. Even though the Dynamic guides are enabled now, you won't be able to see them on your slide. But, when you are working with some slide object(s), for example, when you move shapes from one place to another within the Slide Area, you can see Dynamic guides making an appearance, as shown in Figure 5, below.
4. 
   Figure 5: Dynamic guides appear only when moving the slide objects in the slide area
4. To disable the Dynamic guides, select the View | Guides | Dynamic Guides menu option again so that this option is unchecked.

Static Guides

1. To enable Static guides, select the View | Guides | Static Guides menu option, as shown in Figure 6, below.
2. 
   Figure 6: Static Guides option within the Guides sub-menu
2. Now, you can see the Static guides displayed on the slide, as shown in Figure 7, below.
3. 
   Figure 7: Static Guides visible on the PowerPoint 2011 slide
3. These guides will be visible on all presentations you open hereafter, until you hide them by selecting the View | Guides | Static Guides menu option again to uncheck it.