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Duplicate Shapes Using Command+D in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac

Learn how to duplicate shapes using the Command+D key combination in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

Author: Geetesh Bajaj

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

Date Created: November 24th 2011
Last Updated: November 24th 2011

You learned how to duplicate shapes by dragging them in an earlier tutorial, but while that's a nice way to duplicate two or five shapes, it's not the best way to create ten, twenty, or more copies. We all know that you can press Command+C to copy any shape in PowerPoint to the clipboard, and a resulting Command+V always pastes a copy from the clipboard to the slide -- what many people don't realize is PowerPoint has this almost supernatural keyboard shortcut called Command+D (yes, the D stands for duplicate), and this shortcut does more than just duplicate; in fact it creates a pattern of evenly-spaced and symmetrical shapes! Follow these steps to explore:

Select the shape you want to duplicate, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Shape selected
Press Command+D to create a duplicate of the selected shape. Figure 2 shows the duplicate of the selected shape created and placed overlapping the original shape.

Figure 2: Duplicate of the selected shape created
At this point of time, avoid using your mouse altogether. Since the duplicate shape will be selected as soon as it was created, any nudges you do to the shape by pressing the arrow keys on your keyboard should work. Nudge multiple times in various directions until you are happy with the spacing between the original shape, and the duplicated one (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Duplicate shape with adjusted spacing
Now press the Command+D key combination repeatedly to build a pattern. The next duplicate shapes will retain the spacing and direction between the first two shapes, as you can see in Figure 4.

Figure 4: Evenly spaced duplicates are created
Save your presentation often.