Align objects easily in PowerPoint

Recently, I watched an individual struggle trying to align two objects in PowerPoint 2003 with a series of click and drags and nudges. When asked, she explained that she wanted to align the two objects to their left border. Rather than manually adjust the objects, she should just select the target objects. Now, from the Drawing toolbar, select Draw > Align or Distribute > Align Left (observe following image).

The selected objects align their left boundary to the object with the leftmost boundary (see following image). In this example. the red heart’s left boundary moved to match the green oval’s left boundary. You can also quickly align multiple objects to the center, right, top, middle, and bottom.

If you want a object centered on the slide, you need to turn on the Relative to Slide feature, which is turned off by default. Go back to the Drawing toolbar and select Draw > Align or Distribute > Relative to Slide (observe following image).

With the Relative to Slide feature turned on select your object and click Draw > Align or Distribute > Align Center (observe following image). In this example, the red heart is centered horizontally. If I also want it centered in the middle, I would select Draw > Align or Distribute > Align Middle. One thing to remember is that once you turn on the Relative to Slide feature, it stays on until you turn it off.

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