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Drawing Scribble Lines in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac

Learn how to draw with the Scribble line tool in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

Author: Geetesh Bajaj

Product/Version: Microsoft PowerPoint 2011
OS: Mac OS X

Date Created: January 25th 2012
Last Updated: January 25th 2012

You have already learned how to use three of the four line drawing tools in PowerPoint 2011: Line, Curve, and Freeform. In this tutorial, we show you how you can use the last of these line tools: the Scribble Line tool. Drawing with the Scribble line is almost the same as drawing with the Freeform line -- but there are two differences. First, you don't need to double click to establish the end point of your drawing when you are using Scribble tool. Just like you draw with a pencil on a piece of paper, your line stops the minute you stop drawing it. Second, the Scribble tool does not allow you to draw straight lines. Having said that, you still need to practice to make your scribble lines perfect. Let us get started and explore how the shape tool works in PowerPoint 2011:

Follow these steps to draw with the Scribble line tool in PowerPoint 2010:

Launch PowerPoint. You will see the Presentation Gallery which allows you to set all attributes of your new presentation, such as a preset Theme or template. Make selections or just click Cancel in this gallery to open a blank presentation with a new slide -- PowerPoint 2011 users can change the slide layout of this slide to Blank by selecting the option Layout | Blank within the Home tab of the Ribbon.

Within the Home tab of the Ribbon, click the Shape button to view the Shape gallery that you can see in Figure 1. Select the Lines and Connectors option within this gallery, and from the resultant sub-menu, select the Scribble tool shape (refer to Figure 1 again).

Figure 1: Scribble shape selected

As soon as the Scribble shape is selected the cursor changes to a pencil (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Cursor changed to pencil

Click anywhere on the slide to establish the starting point, draw the shape without releasing the mouse button as you can see in Figure 3. Note that the cursor changes to a cross hair once you start drawing.

Figure 3: Drawing with scribble line shape

Now move the cursor to the starting point and release the mouse button to thereby close the shape. The shape now gets filled with the default fill to denote that it has indeed been closed. You'll also see the shape is surrounded by eight selection handles, as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4: Shape created using scribble tool

Tip: If you want just an open shape, release the mouse button away from the starting point of the drawing.