Group and Ungroup Shapes in PowerPoint

 

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PowerPoint sees the rectangle and the arrow as separate objects:

That means if you wanted to move them to a new location, you would have to move each shape separately. If you had a lot of shapes, this could take some time. The answer is to group them. Shapes that are grouped can be moved about as one.

To group you shapes, you need to select both of them. Click on the arrow to select that shape. With the arrow selected, hold down the Shift key on your keyboard (the one above CTRL). Keep the Shift key held down and left click on the edges of the rectangle. Here's what you're aiming for:

When you can see white squares or circles around the rectangle and the arrow then you know that both objects are selected.

Once you have selected the rectangle and the arrow, right click anywhere on the two shapes. You should see a menu appear:

Select Grouping from the menu. Then click Group on the sub menu that appears. The arrow and the rectangle will then look like this:

The white squares (or circles) are now only round the edges - the shapes are one object!

 

Copy and Paste a Grouped Object

Now that we have a Grouped object, we can copy and paste it twice. This will get us the other two rectangles we need.

Right click anywhere inside of your new Grouped object. You'll the same menu again. This time, select Copy. When the menu disappears, Right click anywhere on your white slide. From the new menu that appears, select Paste. You should see a copy of your Grouped object, as in the image below:

Right click again, and select Paste. This will get you the third object:

Now that you have three rectangles and arrows, you can move them into position.

With the third rectangle selected, as in the image above, again Right click. From the menu this time, select Format Object:

When you click on Format Object, a new dialogue box will appear. Click on the Position tab at the top:

For shape three, set the Horizontal to 17.5 cm, and the Vertical to 8 cm. Click the Preview button to see what it looks like. Then click OK.

Do the same to the second shape. Set the Horizontal position of shape two to 9.4 cm, and the Vertical to 8 cm:

Click OK, and your three shapes should be spread neatly across the slide, all lined up. If they are not, click a shape to select. Hold down the Shift or Ctrl key on your keyboard, and use the arrow keys to nudge it into position. Or you can drag with the mouse.

You three shapes should now look like this:

 

Ungroup an Object

The problem with the shapes above is that the third one still has an arrow. (They also have the same text, but we'll fix that in a moment.) We don't want an arrow on the far-right rectangle. Because the rectangle and the arrow are grouped, you can't delete one without deleting the other. Your first have to Ungroup.

To ungroup an object that you have previously grouped, left click the object to select it. Now Right click. From the menu that appears, select Grouping > Ungroup:

When you click Ungroup, your shapes will be separated. They will be individual objects again:

Notice that the white square are different - they are around both shapes. Click away, then click back on just the arrow. You will select only the arrow, and not the rectangle, as in the image below:

When your arrow and rectangle look like the ones above, hit the Delete key on your keyboard. The arrow should vanish. Your three objects will then look like this:

 

In the next part, we'll change the text on the shapes, and add a text box at the bottom.

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