Group, Ungroup, and Regroup Shapes in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows

So, what exactly does grouping within PowerPoint mean? And what are the ungrouping and regrouping options meant to do further? The moment you select a slide object such as a shape on a PowerPoint slide, you will see some selection handles that indicate the shape is selected. Select another shape while the first one is still selected, and you see two sets of selection handles. If you need to similarly select many shapes on a slide often, this sort of selection may become cumbersome and waste so much time. In that case, it's best you select all the shapes you need to work with, and then combine them into one "group" of shapes.

There are several other reasons to group shapes and other slide objects:

• You may want to animate several slide objects. Rather than selecting each of them individually and then animating them, you can select them all together as a group. Next, you can animate the entire group. This is a great approach if you want to apply the same animation effect to all shapes. So, yes, this approach works best for some animation effects, but not for all.
• Grouping also helps in rotating a few shapes placed next to each other to a certain angle. At times like these, you'll be happy to know that grouping lets you rotate all these shapes at one go.

Once you find that you no longer need your shapes to be grouped, you’ll want to play with the options to ungroup and regroup shapes.

Let us explore the differences between these three tasks in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows:

1. Grouping is the process of making a single selection of a disparate or similar set of slide objects. When you select it again, you end up selecting the entire group rather than a single object. A group has a single set of selection and rotation handles. Compare the individual elements on the left of Figure 1 to the unified, single group on the right.
2. 
   Figure 1: Individual shapes (left) and the same shapes within a group (right)
2. Ungrouping: This option lets you break up a grouped object back into individual objects. If we were to ungroup the object to the shown towards the right in Figure 1, above, the ungrouped result would look like the set of objects shown towards the left of the same Figure 1.
3. Regrouping: Sometimes, you need to ungroup an object just so that you can make one small change to a particular slide object. Regrouping remembers whatever objects comprised the original group, and reconstitutes the original group without you having to select all individual slide objects all over again.

1. Grouping Shapes

Select the shapes, or other slide objects that you want to group in PowerPoint. Then, follow any one of these three alternative processes:

1. Right-click the selection carefully, and choose Group | Group option from the resultant menu, as shown in Figure 2, below.
2. 
   Figure 2: Grouping shapes
2. You can also group shapes by pressing the Ctrl + G shortcut key.


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3. You'll also find the Group option on the Home tab of the Ribbon. Click the Arrange button to bring up a drop-down gallery, in this gallery select the Group option.

Once shapes or other slide objects are grouped, you can change attributes for them as a single grouped entity. For example, if you rotate an entire group, all individual objects in that group will rotate together as a single object. Look at Figure 3, below, where you can see individual shapes rotated 45 degrees each. You can see the non-grouped, unrotated objects in Figure 1. Compare this with the group on the right within Figure 3, which was also rotated by 45 degrees. You'll see that the rotation on the right looks much more predictable.

Figure 3: Rotation of 45 degrees applied to individual shapes (on the left) and a group (on the right)

2. Ungrouping Shapes

Select the group you want to ungroup. Then, follow any of these three alternative options:

1. Right-click the group carefully to get the resultant menu, as shown in Figure 4, below, and then choose the Group | Ungroup option.
2. 
   Figure 4: Ungroup option selected
2. You can also ungroup shapes by pressing the Ctrl + Shift + G shortcut key.
3. You'll also find the Ungroup option on the Home tab of the Ribbon. Click the Arrange button to bring up a drop-down gallery. In this gallery, select the Ungroup option.

3. Regrouping Shapes

To regroup (reconstitute) any hitherto ungrouped group, select any one of the shapes within a previous group. Thereafter, follow any of these two alternative processes:

1. Right-click the selected shape carefully, and choose the Group | Regroup option from the resultant menu, as shown in Figure 5, below.
2. 
   Figure 5: Regroup to reconstitute your ungrouped group
2. In addition, you'll also find the Regroup option on the Home tab of the Ribbon. Click the Arrange button to bring up a drop-down gallery that contains the Regroup option.

Ungroup or Regroup Grayed Out?

Are the Ungroup and Regroup options grayed out? Remember, Ungroup is only available when the selected object is a group. Similarly, Regroup is only available as an option if any selected shape or slide object was part of a previously constituted group.
3. Save your presentation often.