Rotate Text 180° within Shapes in PowerPoint 2016 for Mac

If you have worked aplenty with text in PowerPoint, you must be aware that you cannot rotate text within a shape by 180°. What's surprising is that you can rotate text by 90° and 270° within a shape, but not by 180°! But why would you need upside-down text that is rotated 180°? Many users do need this upside-down text to explain advanced concepts.

Tip: This technique is not limited to shapes. It works with all text containers including text boxes and placeholders. Although this tutorial pertains to shapes, there's no reason why you cannot follow the same steps to rotate all other types of text containers by 180 degrees in the same way.

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 were to rotate individual Teardrop shapes so that they can form a flower, then you will end up with something similar to the middle graphic in Figure 1. Clearly, the text within the shapes needs to be rotated as well. 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 already had properly placed text. So, only the Teardrop shape highlighted in red within the righ-most graphic of Figure 1 has a problem! In this tutorial, we'll show you a step by step procedure that will allow you to rotate text 180° within a shape in PowerPoint 2016 for Mac.

Figure 1: Sample shapes show various text rotation

Follow these steps to learn more:

Insert a shape on the slide. For this tutorial we choose a Teardrop shape (see Figure 2). Also, type in some text within the inserted shape, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Text within a Teardrop shape
Now, right-click (or Ctrl+click) the shape, and from the contextual menu, select the Format Shape option to open the Format Shape Task Pane, as shown in Figure 3. Within the Format Shape task pane, make sure you select the Text Options tab (highlighted in red within Figure 3). Then, within the Textbox option (highlighted in blue within Figure 3), select the Text direction down-arrow and select the Rotate all text 90° option from the drop-down menu, as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Format Shape Task Pane
Note: Learn more about the text direction options in our Align Text within Shapes and Text Boxes in PowerPoint 2016 for Mac tutorial, explore step 2B on that page.
Doing so will rotate text within your shape to 90°, as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Text rotated to 90°
Now, flip the shape horizontally. To do so, click the Arrange button (highlighted in red within Figure 5). In the resultant menu, choose the Rotate option (highlighted in blue within Figure 5) to open another drop-down menu. From this menu, select the Flip Horizontal option, as shown in Figure 5. Learn more about flipping shapes in our Flip Shapes in PowerPoint 2016 for Mac tutorial.
Figure 5: Flip shape horizontally
Figure 6 below shows the shape after flipping horizontally.
Figure 6: Shape flipped horizontally
Select the shape and rotate it to 90°. To do so, click the Arrange button. In the resultant menu, choose the Rotate option to open another drop-down menu. From this menu, select the Rotate Right 90° option, as shown in Figure 7.
Figure 7: Shape rotated to 90°
This will rotate the text within the shape to 180°, as shown in Figure 8.
Figure 8: Text within shape rotated to 180°
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