This week’s post goes hand in hand with last week’s Align Objects Without a Grid post. If you’ve ever needed to spread objects (shapes, pictures, graphs) evenly across a slide or page, you’ll love the Distribute tools on the Align button. They’re available in PowerPoint, Word, Outlook, and Excel. They allow you to distribute objects evenly, either horizontally or vertically. No more turning on the grid and eyeballing it. No more looking at the ruler and doing math in your head to figure out the distance between shapes.
Distribute Objects Relative to Each Other
If you select to distribute objects relative to each other, then the farthest left and farthest right objects (or topmost and bottom most) will stay in the same place and the other selected objects will spread evenly between them.
- Select all the objects you would like to distribute. (To select multiple objects: hold down the Ctrl key on the keyboard and click on each object you want to select.)
- On the Format tab of the ribbon, click the Align button.
- From the drop down list, make sure that Align Selected Objects is selected. You’ll know that it is selected because it will have an orange box with a check mark beside it.
- Select Distribute Horizontally or Distribute Vertically.
Distribute Objects Across a Slide or Page
If you select to distribute relative to the slide (PowerPoint) or page/margins (Word and Outlook), the objects will spread evenly across the whole slide or page.
- Select all the objects you would like to distribute. (To select multiple objects: hold down the Ctrl key on the keyboard and click on each object you want to select.)
- On the Format tab of the ribbon, click the Align button.
- From the drop down list, make sure that Align to Slide (or Align to Page or Align to Margins) is selected. You’ll know that it is selected because it will have an orange box with a check mark beside it.
- Select Distribute Horizontally or Distribute Vertically.
