Alignment Modes

With PowerTools, you have more control and more choice. In addition to PowerPoint’s default alignment options you can now align objects to a selected reference object or your guides. The following alignment modes are available with PowerTools:

• Align to Selection: This is the default alignment mode for PowerPoint. Objects are aligned to the boundaries of your selection.
• Align to Reference Object: When you select two or more objects, this option aligns your selection to the reference object. Depending on your setting in PowerTools, the reference object can either be the last selected, or the first selected object — the name of the feature will reflect what setting you currently have active. The Set Reference Object setting can be found by clicking Settings in the PowerTools tab.
• Align to Guides: Aligns your selection to the nearest guide. Click align multiple times to move through all the guides.
• Align to Slides: This is PowerPoint’s default alignment mode for a single object. With PowerTools you can use this alignment mode with multiple objects at once.

Remember Between Sessions

You can enable this setting to save your preferred settings, and PowerPoint will always start in your preferred alignment mode.

Shortcuts

• Shift-click the alignment tools anywhere in PowerPoint for Align to Reference Object.
• Alt-click the alignment tools anywhere in PowerPoint for Align to Guides. Repeatedly click the selected align option to shuffle through the guides. Add Shift to shuffle through the guides in the opposite direction.
• Ctrl-click the alignment tools anywhere in PowerPoint to add Match Size functionality. Resize all objects to match the first selected object. You can combine Ctrl with the Shift key shortcut above.