merge shapes in PPT

How to Merge Shapes in PowerPoint?

Custom graphics and visuals can be made with different shapes in PowerPoint. You might have seen professional designers turning different shapes into stunning visuals. As a beginner, you can also merge shapes in PowerPoint to make your slides more interactive. If you cannot find the desired shape in PowerPoint, use this method to merge shapes and create new ones.

The idea of merging shapes in a slide is like merging two objects in real life. There are different merging options that you can choose from. Merge options allow intersecting, subtracting, and many other options. Let’s see how to use the merge features for different shapes.

Overview of the Merge Shapes Feature in PowerPoint

The primary purpose of this feature is to allow manipulation of different shapes to create new ones. This feature has unlimited possibilities for custom shapes and visuals. Here is why professional presentation makers like to use the merge feature:

  • Add dimensions and depth to your slides
  • Highlight a specific area of your presentation slides
  • Use custom shapes for timelines, charts, and graphs
  • Adding visuals to the background of your presentations
  • Creating new icons and visuals with shapes

Remember that merging shapes is easy, but being creative with shapes is harder. Try different possibilities once you have learned how to merge shapes in PowerPoint.

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The Easiest Way to Merge Shapes for Slides

If you want to merge different shapes in PowerPoint, the selected slide should have two or more shapes. In this tutorial, we will use two different shapes so that you can easily understand how merging shapes works. Follow these steps to merge different shapes in PowerPoint.

Step 1: Add Shapes

Open your PowerPoint presentation and navigate to the slide where you want to add shapes. You can use a new PPT or an existing one for adding and merging shapes.

Go to the Insert tab and click on the Shapes icon to view the menu. Select any shape you want to insert and then draw it on the slide.

insert shape one to slide

Now, repeat the same process, adding a second shape to the slide and drawing it above the first one. Overlapping shapes will help us understand the concept better.

add second image to the slide

You can use the Shape Styles section to change the color of the shape. We changed the shapes’ colors to white from the original color.

Step 2: Select Shapes

We have added just two shapes to the slide. You can add more, and once you have added them, select the shapes that you want to merge. Use the left mouse click with the CTRL key to select the shapes.

Step 3: Merge Shapes

After selecting the shapes, go to the Shape Format tab and click on Merge Shapes, as shown in the image.

select and merger shapes

Now, view the available merge options by clicking on the Merge button. Try different possibilities to choose the one that best suits your needs.

custom shapes in PPT

Merging shapes offers great possibilities for styling and designing your slides, but you need to be extra careful about the shape selection. It is better to visit online blogs for inspiration. Once you have a clear design idea, try merging shapes in PowerPoint.

Customize your Slides with AI

Shapes are an amazing tool for customizing your slide according to your needs. Merge options make things even more exciting, as you don’t have to stick to the available shapes only. However, manually selecting and merging shapes requires a great knowledge of graphic design concepts.

Being a good presenter does not mean you have a great design experience, either. Most users don’t even know how to design a simple slide according to the topic. For such users, we have an amazing AI add-in for presentations that works just like ChatGPT for PowerPoint.

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Instead of making presentations from scratch, Twistly generates professional presentations within minutes. The user just has to provide the topic and select the desired theme, Twistly AI add-in takes care of the rest. You are not limited to creating slides from a topic only, but you can:

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  • Write a prompt or AI command
  • Upload a PDF or Word document
  • Write text or paste an article

Based on the input, Twistly will generate an outline of slides and then ask you to select one of the many available AI PowerPoint templates. You just wait while Twistly does the magic, and your slides will be ready with:

  • Engaging, relevant, and researched text for the slides
  • Optimized and modified theme or presentation template
  • Custom images and visuals to make PPT slides more engaging
  • Formatting of slides to improve user engagement
  • AI-based manipulation of shapes and visuals to create tables, timelines, and other elements
  • Completely editable slides with PowerPoint features 
PPT made with AI Twistly

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Conclusion

Be creative with visuals and merge shapes in PowerPoint to create custom designs. Or let Twistly AI do the hard work for you. This AI presentation maker can generate engaging slides within minutes so that you can focus on what matters most.