Arrange Shapes/Images in Powerpoint 2010

PowerPoint supports multiple content types and invariably different contents coexist in a slide. While it is ideal to have each content standout separately, there are times when you cannot do that or when overlapping of content is desirable. In such cases, it is important that you can determine which content stays on top of which one.

PowerPoint has arrangement features to help achieve this goal. While working with arrangement features, you must think of each content as a separate layer and that these layers are laid over one another. To arrange the content, you must basically play with these layers.

The following steps will help you arrange content in a presentation slide.

Step 1 − Select one of the contents and go the Arrange group under the Format ribbon.

Step 2 − Click on the Selection Pane to open the Selection and Visibility sidebar.

Step 3 − Select one of the rows in the sidebar to highlight the corresponding content in the slide.

Step 4 − Use the reordering arrows in the sidebar to move the content layer up or down.

Step 5 − Click on the eye next to each content in the sidebar to toggle its visibility on the slide.

Instead of using the Selection Pane option, you can also right-click on the content to move it up or down. When you right-click, besides moving the layers by one step at a time using Bring Forward or Send Backward, you can also move the content directly to the top or bottom using Bring to Front or Send to Back respectively.