Change One Shape to Another in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows

Imagine you have worked on a shape in PowerPoint by applying effects, animation, and a fill. Later you realize that you used a wrong shape, or perhaps the client wants you to change the shape but retain all the effects, animations, and fills! You may want to delete and start over again, and that is a long drawn process. However, you don't have to do that for you can change any existing shape to another by using these steps in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows:

1. Select the shape which you want to change (see Figure 1).
2. 
   Figure 1: Select the shape
2. This activates the Drawing Tools Format tab of the Ribbon (refer to Figure 1 above). Within the Insert Shapes group, click the Edit Shape button, as shown in Figure 2.
3. 
   Figure 2: Edit Shape button
3. This brings up a small menu. Choose the Change Shape option (see Figure 3) to bring up a variant of the Shape gallery. Choose the shape type you need to change to (refer to Figure 3 again).
4. 
   Figure 3: Choose Shape to change
4. Note that your new shape has the same fill, animation, outline, effect, and hyperlink attributes as the earlier shape. If you added no animation or hyperlink to the existing shape, then of course the new shape also won't have any animation or hyperlink attributes.
5. 
   Figure 4: Changed shape
5. Save your presentation often.