Drawing Lines in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows

PowerPoint has an amazing repertoire of tools that you can use to create awesome slides. However PowerPoint is primarily considered a presentation slides program in which you can bring in text, graphics, multimedia, animation, etc. to deliver a message or a story. Even many seasoned PowerPoint users completely miss the fact that PowerPoint is a great drawing program with tools and options that rival the top end graphic programs.

Yes, you have learned how you can use readymade shapes in PowerPoint to place rectangles, circles, and hundreds of other shapes. However, PowerPoint has always included the ability to create your own shapes from scratch by drawing them. These drawing tools are essentially the Line shapes that can be found within the Shapes gallery. This introductory tutorial shows you how to draw a simple line on the slide; subsequently, you will learn more advanced concepts.

To draw a simple point to point line in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows, follow these steps:

1. Launch PowerPoint 2010. Most of the time PowerPoint will open with a new slide in a presentation. PowerPoint 2010 users can change the slide layout to Blank by selecting Home tab | Layout | Blank.
2. Within the Home or Insert tab of the Ribbon, click the Shapes button to view the Shapes gallery that you can see in Figure 1. Select the Line shape.
3. 
   Figure 1: Line selected in PowerPoint 2010
3. As soon as the Line shape is selected, the cursor changes to a cross hair (see Figure 2).
4. 
   Figure 2: Cross hair cursor
4. Place the cursor to establish the starting point of your line. Then hold down the left mouse button, don't release it yet, and drag the cursor to the point where you want the line to end. Then release the mouse button to establish the ending point of your line.
5. You'll end up drawing your first line on the slide, as shown in Figure 3. The line has handles at either end, these handles can be clicked on to resize and move the line.
6. 
   Figure 3: Line drawn on the slide
6. Click anywhere on the slide to deselect the line.
7. Save your presentation.