Shape Floatie within PowerPoint Touch in Office 2013 for Windows

Whenever you tap on an object in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint versions of Office 2013 while using a touch device such as the Microsoft Surface, you will see a floatie spawning right there! In our Using the Touch Floatie within PowerPoint Touch in Office 2013 tutorial, we explored how you can bring up floaties with differing options, depending upon the object you tap. The resultant floatie contains all the options required to format the tapped slide object. In this tutorial, we'll explore various options within the Shape floatie, as shown in Figure 1. You access this floatie by tapping a Shape.

Figure 1: Tap on the required button within the floatie

To activate any of these options, you need to tap the required button on the floatie, as shown in Figure 1, above:

Look again at the Shape floatie, and you will find buttons for formatting the tapped shape, as shown marked in Figure 2, below. The first four buttons (Paste, Cut, Copy, and Delete) have been explained in our Using the Touch Floatie within PowerPoint Touch in Office 2013 tutorial.

Figure 2: Shape floatie

The remaining buttons are explained below, as marked in Figure 2, above.

A. Style

Tap on the Style button to bring up the Style drop-down gallery, as shown in Figure 3, below. The Style drop-down gallery contains a collection of prebuilt styles. These styles are all Theme-specific, so if your presentation's Theme is changed, you'll end up with new Styles. Note that within the Style drop-down gallery, you may have to slide from the bottom to reveal more styles, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Style drop-down gallery

Tap on any of these Styles to apply it to your selected Shape.

B. Fill

This button, when tapped brings up the Fill drop-down gallery, as shown in Figure 4, below. Within this drop-down gallery, you'll find various shape fill options. You can find Theme Colors, Standard Colors, Picture, Gradient, etc. for the shape. If you cannot see all these options, slide from the bottom to reveal more options, as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4: Fill drop-down gallery

Again, tap on any of these fill options to apply it to your selected shape.

C. Outline

To navigate Shape Outline options for your shape, tap the Outline button to bring up the Outline drop-down gallery, as shown in Figure 5, below. Within the Outline drop-down gallery, you'll find Theme Colors, Standard Colors, Weight, and Dashes options. To see all the options within the Outline drop-down gallery, slide from the bottom to reveal more options, as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Outline drop-down gallery

Tap on any of these outline options to apply it to your selected shape.

D. Edit Text

When you tap on this button, you will see an insertion point cursor. Anything you type now shows up as text within the shape, as shown in Figure 6, below.

Figure 6: Shape with text insertion cursor

E. More Options

Tap on the down-arrow to bring up a drop-down menu with more formatting options for selected shape, as shown in Figure 7, below.

Figure 7: More shape formatting options

Some of these options may be grayed out if you have selected a single shape, or if there's no other object on your slide, document, or sheet.

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