How to Distribute Shapes Horizontally in PowerPoint?

Neatly organized and evenly spaced shapes are important for a professional presentation. Visually aesthetic slides and objects or shapes have a strong impact on the audience. Whether you have multiple images, shapes, or objects in the slide, you should know how to distribute shapes horizontally in PowerPoint.

When it comes to organized shapes and objects, you can align objects in different styles, from left to right, center, or middle. In this article, we will learn how to space and distribute multiple shapes and objects in a slide.

What does “Distribute Horizontally” Mean?

“Distribute Horizontally” is a layout tool in PowerPoint that ensures equal spacing between the selected shapes along the horizontal (left-to-right) axis.

Imagine you have four different shapes in your slide, and you want to space these shapes evenly from each other. Manually placing these shapes at equal distances is quite challenging. With the Distribute Horizontally option, you can easily arrange multiple shapes with a single click.

How to Distribute Shapes Horizontally?

This feature requires you to have more than one object or shape in your PowerPoint presentation slide. In this example, we have added four different shapes to the slide. Now, we will learn how to distribute shapes horizontally in PowerPoint. 

Step 1: Select Shapes or Objects

Go to your slide, having objects and shapes, and select all the shapes that you want to distribute horizontally. The shapes can be spaced in a random manner.

Step 2: Align Middle

If we don’t align the middle of all shapes, you won’t clearly see if the shapes are distributed horizontally. Go to Shape Format and click Align >> Align Middle.

This will align all shapes against the middle of every shape. This is how images will look once you press middle align.

You can see that all shapes are aligned perfectly, but the space between each object is still uneven.

Step 3: Distribute Horizontally

Make sure all objects are still selected, go to Shape Format >> Align >> Distribute Horizontally. Now, all objects are evenly spaced from each other.

If you want to bring shapes closer to each other, use shapes on both ends as anchors, as PowerPoint will space shapes based on the distance between the first and last shape.

How to Distribute Shapes Vertically?

Imagine we have four different shapes, arranged randomly and vertically. If you want to arrange them in a neat and clean way, follow these steps to distribute them vertically.

Step 1: Select all Objects and Align the Center

Go to the slide, select all shapes that you want to arrange, and then go to Shape Format >> Align >> Align Center.

Step 2: Distribute Vertically

As all shapes are aligned in the center, you can now space these shapes evenly, vertically. Go to Shape Format and then select Distribute Vertically from the Align menu.

Your organized and vertically distributed shapes should look like the image below.

How to Design and Optimize Slides Instantly?

As you can see, arranging only a few shapes can take a long time. Now imagine cleaning and optimizing a presentation with multiple slides. This whole process is frustrating, time-consuming, and challenging for anyone.

What if AI could organize, optimize, and design slides for you, instantly? Instead of doing everything manually, how about AI making a presentation for you?

Twistly Add-in for PowerPoint

Twistly has emerged as one of the most popular AI presentation makers for PowerPoint this year. With millions of presentations made, Twistly has redefined how we use PowerPoint.

Now, you can make an entire presentation by simply entering the topic, the presentation, or a simple AI prompt. Above all, Twistly works inside PowerPoint, so you don’t need to switch between different tools and programs.

Automatic Slide Designing and Optimization

When you make a single slide or a complete presentation with Twistly, AI does not just arrange shapes and objects for you. From writing content to adding images and designing complete slides, Twistly does everything within seconds.

You don’t need to waste any more time on manually designing slides. There are pre-defined slide templates that you can use or make complete presentations from scratch.

Enjoy Custom ChatGPT for PowerPoint

Twistly is more like a custom ChatGPT for PowerPoint. Premium AI features are available for premium subscribers only, but new users can download Twistly for free and enjoy a free trial for a limited time.

Once you are impressed with the power of AI for PowerPoint, upgrade your subscription and elevate your PowerPoint experience.

Create PowerPoint
Slides with AI

Build AI-powered presentations from
any prompt, doc, or video

Start for free

Final Words

Use the align feature in the Shape Format tab to distribute shapes horizontally or vertically. You can also align multiple objects from this tab. Distributing shapes horizontally in PowerPoint is a simple yet powerful technique that brings balance, precision, and professionalism to your slide designs.