Space Objects Equally in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows

With many objects, your slide may end up looking crowded -- and that's certainly something you do not want to happen. At times though, your slide may appear cluttered even if you really do not have too many objects -- and this can happen because the objects are not spaced out well in relation to each other. To understand this better, look at Figure 1 -- the slide is divided into two halves. You'll notice that the shapes on the left and right are exactly the same -- in fact they are also the same number of shapes. Yet the shapes in the left half look crowded and cluttered while the ones on the right half look arranged and composed. That's because the shapes on the right are well spaced.


Figure 1: Proper spacing can make a difference

You obviously want your slide objects to be properly spaced -- and in earlier versions of PowerPoint, you could achieve proper spacing with the help of Align and Distribute options -- and these options are still available. However, you can now space your objects merely by dragging them around in PowerPoint 2013, with the help of Smart Guides. We do cover a bit of this in our Smarter Guides in PowerPoint 2013 tutorial.

When you are working with multiple objects on your slides, Smart Guides automatically appear and display when objects are being dragged.

Follow these steps to learn how you can space slide objects using Smart Guides in PowerPoint 2013:

1. Open a presentation which already has some shapes. Alternatively, create a blank presentation and change the slide layout to Blank. Now, insert multiple shapes on the slide. In Figure 2, below you can see three shapes on the slide.
   
   
   Figure 2: Three square shapes on the slide
2. Note that the spacing is not equal in between the three square shapes. The space in between shapes 1 and 2 is lesser than the spacing between shapes 2 and 3. To correct this discrepancy, start dragging shape 3 towards shape 2, as shown in Figure 3.
   
   
   Figure 3: Shape 3 being dragged leftwards
   
   Notice that as you do so, dotted lines appear -- this ensures that the top and bottom alignment is even for all three shapes.
3. Keep dragging the 3rd shape -- as you get close enough to the 2nd shape, you'll see that another Smart Guide appears, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 4. This indicates that the space in between shapes 2 and 3 is now equal to the space between shapes 1 and 2.
   
   
   Figure 4: Equal space in-between the shapes
4. Make sure you save your presentation often.

This sort of control over spacing lets you evenly place your slide objects on a slide very intuitively.