Learn about Smart Dynamic Guides in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows.
Author: Geetesh Bajaj
Product/Version: PowerPoint 2013 for Windows
OS: Windows 7 and higher
Do you notice that any object you move, resize, or align in PowerPoint 2013 actually helps make your task easy! Move it a little closer, resize a wee bit, or even try spacing slide objects and the screen shows all sorts of helpful indicators in the form of dotted lines, as shown in Figure 1, below.
Figure 1: Smart guides appear while repositioning
The red, dotted lines are essentially Smart Guides -- these made their debut in PowerPoint 2010 and allowed you to position objects easily -- now in PowerPoint 2013, they are a whole lot smarter and even let you see how much further you need to drag so that one object on the slide is as wide as another. In fact, you can also evenly space out objects without accessing any Ribbon tabs or typing a number within a dialog box!
By default, these Smart Guides are turned on -- but just in case you don't find these working for you (you may have turned them off inadvertently), follow these steps to turn them on again. Incidentally, you reverse the same steps to turn them off:
Once you turn on these options, your Smart Guides start helping you reposition, resize, and align/distribute. Let's start with the shapes you see in Figure 5. We will manipulate these shapes to show you how the various options influenced by Smart Guides work.
Figure 5: Two shapes on the slide
See the example shown in Figure 5 above -- what if you have to reposition so that the top of both the squares match?
To do that, drag the small square upwards until you see the Smart guides (red, dashed lines). In Figure 6 you can see that the Smart Guides have appeared once the top positions match.
Figure 6: Repositioning the shapes
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Smart Guides can help you resize your shapes as well -- let us continue with the example shown in Figure 6, above.
In the preceding section you learnt how to reposition and resize the shapes -- this actually even aligns the top and bottom (or even the left and right) edges of your shapes. Other than direct alignment, you can also use Smart Guides to influence consistent distribution (spacing) between shapes. However, for distribution to work, you need at least three or more shapes.
When you try to space 3 or more shapes to be equally apart, small arrows will appear to indicate when the spacing is identical, as shown in Figure 9.
Figure 9: Shapes distributed accurately
Using Smart Guides is a matter or practice -- the more you use them, the more intuitive they will feel. Remember that you will feel the "snap" when shapes resize, position, or align identically to adjacent shapes.
See Also:
Smart Dynamic Guides in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows
Smart Dynamic Guides in PowerPoint 2016 for Mac
Smart Dynamic Guides in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows
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