Google Slides – Inserting & editing shapes - Learn Google Workspace & Apps Script

In this post, we’re going to look at inserting and editing shapes in Slides. There are a whole range of shapes you can insert and edit.

This is one of the tools that makes Slides more than just a ‘presentation’ package. For example, a comic, a flyer, a process flow diagram, step-by-step guide, adventure story, game template, floor plan, etc.

Adding shapes allows you to represent your ideas. So, here we’ll look at:

Inserting shapes
Filling a colour
Duplicating
Rotating
Flipping
Different types – Shapes, arrows, callouts
Line colour, thickness, dash, type
Adding guides

Inserting shapes

To insert a shape click on the “Shape” icon on the toolbar.

This will open a menu with a whole variety of shapes. They are in four categories: Shapes, Arrows, Callouts, and Equation. Here are the shapes available:

Here, I’m going to create a simple floor plan, which will show you some of the useful tools that can also be used with shapes, to enable you to create the visual you want.

From the Shapes options, I’ve added a rectangle. Do this by clicking on the symbol in the menu, then clicking on the slide and dragging the shape to the size you want.

Now, I want to add a corner shape. I do the same as above. I want to line it up with the edge of the rectangle. To do this, click and drag the shape until you see the red guideline, which shows you that the left-hand side of the shape is in line with that of the rectangle.

Changing the fill colour

By default, the shape is filled in with a light grey colour. Let’s change that to a darker one. Click on the “Fill colour” icon on the toolbar.

This opens up the colour palette. You have a choice of a selection of colours, including both solid and gradient fills, plus a group of colours that match the theme, or the option of creating your own colour in the custom section.

Here, I’ve selected a dark grey.

Duplicating an element

Now, I want to make a duplicate of the rectangle. There are two ways to do this, I can either press Ctrl+D (Cmd + D) and the duplicate will appear just slightly off the original. Or I can hold down Ctrl and drag the original (Alt+drag), and the duplicate will appear and starting moving.

Rotating an element

Now, I want to rotate it 90^o clockwise. Go to the “Arrange” menu, select “Rotate”, then “Rotate clockwise 90^o. You can access the same menu by right-clicking on the shape, then selecting “Rotate”, etc

Here, we have the rotated rectangle. Now I just drag it to where I want it.

You can also rotate an element by clicking on it and then clicking on the little circle above it, then moving either to the left or right. You’ll see the degrees of rotation appear.

Here, I’ve rotated a chord shape, which kind of looks like a chair.

Flipping an element

We can also flip an element either along the vertical plane or the horizontal one. Let’s flip the corner shape. I duplicate it, then right-click on it to open the menu. Select “Rotate” then “flip horizontally”. This produces a mirror image of the original, i.e. the part on the left is now on the right.

Using the above tools, I can quickly make a floor plan such as the one below.

Adding other shapes

Now, let’s look at some other shapes and their uses. This time I want to produce a simple flow chart showing the steps of a process.

I’ve created 4 text boxes (by duplicating the original three times) and filled them in with orange.

Now, I want to show a process by adding some arrows. Click on the shapes icon, then “Arrows”. Click on the arrow you want.

Resize the arrow by dragging the blue squares.

I then change the colour by filling the arrow with a darker grey and duplicate it three times, so that I have the same arrow for each step.

Adding a border colour

Here, I also want to add a dark line to the outside of the orange boxes. To do so, I click on the first box, then holding down the shift key, I click on the second box, third box and fourth box. Note, that the arrows aren’t selected here.

Click on the “Border colour” icon on the toolbar.

This opens the colour palette. Click on the colour you want.

This then changes all the boxes. I could of course have done this with the first box then duplicated it, but sometimes we want to change the style of something once the elements have been made.

Adding speech bubbles

If you want to make a comic or a cartoon, you can add speech bubbles it by adding one from “Callouts”.

By default, it has a light grey background like the rectangle we added earlier. Here I’ve changed it to a white background by using Fill colour.

To add text to your bubble, you’ll need to add a text box in it, and type some words.

Here, I’ve centred the text box and added bolding, to improve the look of it.

Changing the border weight

To me, the border of the bubble is too thin, so let’s make it thicker. Click on “Border weight” on the toolbar and choose a bigger number (i.e. a thicker line).

Changing the line style

We can also change the line style from a solid line to a dotted or dashed line, if for example, I want to show that the comic character is whispering.

Click on “Line dash” on the toolbar and select one of the options.

Changing border type

There are further line styles you can add, but these are under the Format menu. As an example, let’s add a different border to this welcome sign. At the moment, by default is has a single, thin line as a border.

Go to the “Format” menu, select Borders and lines, Border type, and in this example, I’m going to add a “Triple” line.

As you can see it’s makes a big difference to the look of the sign.

Show ruler

When creating objects, it’s useful to show the ruler to create them to a specific size. Also, the ruler is useful for moving objects around to line them up where you want them. To show the ruler, go to the “View” menu and “Show ruler”.

The ruler will appear around the edge of the slide.

Adding guides

To help with positioning of objects, you can also create vertical and horizontal lines. For example, let’s add a vertical guide. Go to the “View” menu, “Guides” then “Add vertical guide”.

As you can see it adds a vertical line in the middle of the slide. Note, this adds the guide to all the slides in the same position.

You can then move the guide to where you want it. Just click on it and drag it to the position you want. As you move it, the exact position will be displayed. Here, I’ve moved the guide to 5cm from the left-hand side of the slide.

Now, I want to add more guides 5cm apart so that I can place some blocks in those positions. Repeat the steps above and move the guides to 10cm and 15cm.

Then, I move the grey block to the 5cm guide and duplicate it twice and move them to the other positions. So, as you can see it’s very easy to be very exact with the positioning of objects on the slide.

You can also add horizontal guides, just select “Add horizontal guide” from the menu above.

Once the guides are added, it’s possible to edit them. From the same menu, select “Edit guides”.

Here, you can see the vertical guides I’ve already made. It gives you the option of typing in the positions and also changing the line colours. Plus, you can delete any that aren’t needed by clicking on the crosses. Once edited click “Done”.