Manipulating Shapes by Dragging Yellow Handles in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

There are so many different types of shapes that PowerPoint provides you with, and you can format these shapes by resizing, rotating, flipping, etc. Other than these basic formatting tasks, you must explore what you can achieve with the special yellow round handles. Most shapes in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows when selected, display eight resizing handles and a single rotation handle. In addition, some shapes also have one or more yellow round handles. These yellow round handles enable you to change some facets of the selected shape, or in some cases, you can change the entire shape. Figure 1, below, shows a Hexagon with one yellow round handle and a U-turn arrow with five yellow round handles.

Figure 1: The Hexagon has one yellow round handle and the U-turn arrow has five of them

By dragging these yellow round handles, you can perform simple changes in the structure of the shape, such as increasing or decreasing the corner curvature of a rounded rectangle. Some shapes show more changes. The following section includes examples of how dragging the yellow round handles can sometimes change the shape altogether. In other cases, the changes are more subtle.

Dragging the yellow round handle of a Hexagon shape from right to left gives you almost a rectangle, and if the round handle is dragged from left to right it changes the shape into a diamond. Both these changes are shown in Figure 2, below.

Figure 2: A Hexagon can be changed to both a rectangle and a diamond

Dragging the yellow round handle of the 7-pointed Star towards the center makes the star more acute and pointed, and dragging the yellow round handle outwards makes the star look almost like an oval. Both changes are shown in Figure 3, below.

Figure 3: A 7-pointed star gets more pronounced and blurred

By dragging the five yellow round handles on a U-turn arrow shape, you can adjust almost every characteristic of the arrow, as shown in Figure 4, below. Most of the arrow shapes comprise more than one yellow round handle, which alters the arrowhead, lines, curves, etc.

Figure 4: A U-turn Arrow with a modified curve and arrowhead

As you can see in Figure 5, below, a Smiley Face shape can be changed to a straight face or a sad face by merely dragging the yellow round handle on its lip.

Figure 5: Smiley Face shape is changed to a straight face and a sad face by dragging the yellow round handle

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