Creating a Half Circle in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows

An Indezine reader asked a long time ago if one could create three circles next to each other, and make sure that they looked like this:

• The leftmost circle should be filled-in completely
• The second circle should be half full
• The third and the rightmost circle should have no fill, to represent something that is empty

A visual is worth a thousand words, so do look at Figure1 to understand this better.

Figure 1: The filled, half filled, and empty circles

This sort of visual can be used in many scenarios, but is best used when you are explaining an analogy. Also for the classic half-filled or half-empty perspective, you can create a visual with just the middle circle shown in Figure 1. And really speaking, we have used circles—but you could use just any shape you want!

Let's now explore how to create a visual of this sort. The first and third circles are easy, all you need to do is ensure that the first circle has both an outline and a solid fill, and that the third circle has only an outline without a fill. For the latter, you will use the No Fill attribute. The second circle (half circle) is an easy challenge that we'll teach you to create in this one page tutorial using PowerPoint 2013 for Windows.

Follow these steps to get started:

1. Launch PowerPoint 2013 for Windows. Most of the time, PowerPoint will open with a new slide in a presentation. You can change the slide layout to Blank by selecting the Home tab | Layout | Blank.
2. Create a perfect circle, as shown in Figure 2.
3. 
   Figure 2: Perfect Circle
3. Duplicate the circle to make two more copies of it as shown in Figure 3.
4. 
   Figure 3: Three circles with same attributes
4. Select all three circles, and optionally increase the thickness of their outlines. You can also change the line color. Your circles will look similar to what you can see in Figure 4.
5. 
   Figure 4: Circles with thick outlines
5. Select the second and third circles, and format their fill attributes to No Fill, as shown in Figure 5.
6. 
   Figure 5: 2nd and 3rd circles with fill removed
6. Now create a semi-circle elsewhere on the slide, as explained in our Creating a Semi-Circle in PowerPoint 2013 tutorial.
7. Now, copy the shape attributes of the first circle and apply them to the new semicircle using the Format Painter. Then set the outline for this semi-circle to No Outline. Copy this semi-circle and paste it on top of the second circle so that it looks like what you can see in Figure 6.
8. 
   Figure 6: Paste semi-circle on the second circle
8. Now carefully select the pasted semi-circle, right-click and from the resultant contextual menu, choose Send To Back | Send To Back option as shown in Figure 7.
9. 
   Figure 7: Send the semi-circle backward
Tip: If you want to know more about re-ordering the shapes, go to our tutorial Reorder Shapes in PowerPoint 2013.
8. This will send the selected semi-circle behind the full circle and now your second circle will look like a half circle, as shown in Figure 8.
9. 
   Figure 8: Half circle created using a semi-circle and circle
10. Once done, save your presentation.