Rotate Text 180° Within Shapes in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac

In PowerPoint 2011 for Mac, you can change the direction of rotation for text contained within a shape. However you actually cannot find an option to rotate your text within a shape by 180°! Funnily enough, there are options called Rotate to 90° Counterclockwise which actually rotates your text by 270° and Rotate to 90° Clockwise which rotates your text by 90°. So, you can rotate your shape text by 90° and 270°, but there is no option to rotate your text by 180°.

Look at the graphic that you see towards the left in Figure 1, below. Notice that this graphic contains four Teardrop shapes. Now if you rotate individual Teardrop shapes so that they collectively form a flower, then you will achieve something similar to the middle graphic within Figure 1. Since the text within the shape also rotates along with the container shape, it thereafter needs to be rotated back again separately to get back to its original state. That's easier said than done! We rotated the text but were only able to successfully rotate text for 2 Teardrop shapes (90° and 270°). And one of the Teardrops was fine to start with, and so only the text within the Teardrop shape highlighted in red within Figure 1 has a problem! In this tutorial, we'll show you a step by step procedure that will help you to rotate shape text by 180° in PowerPoint 2011.

Figure 1: Sample shapes show various text rotations

Follow these steps to learn more in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac:

1. Insert a shape on the slide. For this tutorial, we choose a Teardrop shape (see Figure 2). Also, we typed in some text within the inserted shape, as shown in Figure 2.
2. 
   Figure 2: Text within a Teardrop shape
2. Now, right-click (or Ctrl + click) the shape and from the contextual menu, select the Format Text option (refer to Figure 2) to open the Format Text dialog box, as shown Figure 3.
3. 
   Figure 3: Format Text dialog box
3. Within the Format Text dialog box, make sure you select the Text Box option (highlighted in red within Figure 3) within the sidebar. Then, select the Text direction option (highlighted in blue within Figure 3). Within the resultant pop-up menu, select the Rotate to 90° Clockwise option as shown in Figure 3.
Note: Learn more about the Text direction options in our Align Text within Shapes / Text Boxes in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac tutorial, where you can explore point 2A.
4. This will rotate the text within your shape to 90° Clockwise, as shown in Figure 4.
5. 
   Figure 4: Text rotated to 90° Clockwise
5. Now, flip the shape horizontally. To do so, first select the shape and access the Arrange drop-down menu within the Home tab, and choose the Rotate or Flip | Flip Horizontal option, as shown in Figure 5. Learn more about flipping shapes in our Flip Shapes in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac tutorial.
6. 
   Figure 5: Flip shape horizontally
6. Figure 6 below shows the shape after it has been flipped horizontally.
7. 
   Figure 6: Shape flipped horizontally
7. Select the shape and rotate it to right. To do so, access the Arrange drop-down menu and choose the Rotate or Flip | Rotate Right option, as shown in Figure 7.
8. 
   Figure 7: Rotate Right option
8. This will achieve what we were looking for. Now, the text within shape is rotated by 180°, as shown in Figure 8.
9. 
   Figure 8: Text within shape rotated to 180°
9. Save your presentation often.