Add and Format Objects to Slides

Dan Wassink 0:01
In this video, we’re going to look at how we can add objects to slides. This includes adding text, shapes, charts, tables, as well as media. When we add these to our slides, what we’re doing is adding these as objects. Let’s see what I mean. Let’s go to my Mac. Now what I’m going to do is create a new blank slide, we’re going to add some objects to it. So you can see how this works. So I go up to add slide here, and we’re just going to go to blank, we have our blank slide. Now to add objects, what we do is we go up to our toolbar, you’re going to see all of our different objects we have available to us up in our toolbar, we have tables, charts, text, shapes, and media. Each one of these are objects.

When we add an object, once we select that, what we can do is we can format that object. So we add the object, and then we format it, our formatting options here will change depending on what we have selected. So if we have a chart selected, we’re going to be able to format that chart change the format of that chart, if it’s a table, we can change the look of that table. If it’s an image, we can modify that image all through our format here. But the first step we have to do is we have to add that object. So let’s go and add a few objects. To see how all this works. What we’re going to do is start with something simple, I’m just going to go with add text, I click on text, and what it does is it adds it to the center of the slide. So if you have a lot of objects on your slide, and you can’t find where that text was added, because you can see this is pretty small special. If you have a busy slide, it always adds it to the center of the slide. Once it adds it, what we can do is move it around and place it wherever you want. But by default, it does place it in the center.

Now once I select it, we can see that it is selected. If I go over to format here, what I’m able to do is style it, I have different styles here, I can fill it, add a border, add a shadow, this adds it to the text box. And then if I want to format the text itself, what I do is I click on text, and now I can change the font, I can go and change the justification, I can go on adjust the spacing. And then if I want to arrange it, I click on arrange. And this allows me to move it back and forth. I’ll talk about that after we add a few objects, I can go on Align it with other objects. And then I can go and change the size and the position. So this is all arrangement tools.

So now I have my text in here. Let’s go and move this up to the upper left hand corner. The next thing we’re going to add is a shape. When I click on Shape, we have a drop down, I can search for different shapes, there are a lot of different shapes. And I can select by category. So let’s go with animals selected. And now I have a number of different animals. So I just select what I want, we’re going to go with the owl here, click on it. And we have my owl. I can resize this by dragging, I can change the color by going over to my format. Right now I’m looking at my arrangement tools. So it’s going to allow me to arrange it, move it back and forth, alignment with other objects, things like that. But if I go over to the left, you’re going to see I have style. And now what I’m able to do is change the style. So let’s go and make this orange. And now we can see that that owl is orange.

I can go and add a border a shadow reflection, just like we can with text. And I can even add text in this shape. So if I double click in here, you’re going to see I have my cursor blinking in there. And I can type in our I want to format that text. Well, I go up under Format here. And we go over to text. And now I can format that text, the text that is in this shape. Let’s go on move that. Over to the left, we have a number of different shapes that we can add. We’re going to go with table next. If you’re familiar with Excel or Numbers, that’s basically what a table is. It’s a basic spreadsheet.

So I click on it. And now I have a number of different styles that I can choose from again, so we’re going to go with this one here. It has a header or footer, as well as the first column is header. So I click on it. Let’s go and resize this. We have our little resize squares here on each corner, click on it and drag it and there is my spreadsheet or my table. To add items to it. I just double click in the cell and I can put text in here. So all We have to do is just double click in that cell, we can put text Numbers, anything that a table accepts including formulas. I can add more rows and columns by clicking on the little equals just like you do in Numbers. I go to each corner here, I can drag around by clicking on the circle.

Again, just like I’m in Numbers, this is how Numbers works. And then if I want to resize it, I click on it. My favorite way of doing that is by clicking on the circle here, and then you’re going to see that that table is selected, it doesn’t select a solace selects the table when you click on this year. And now what I’m able to do is drag it to resize it. When I have this selected, if we go over to format, you’re going to see I have a table here. So now I can format this table, I can change the look. I can go and add a title a caption, I can change the header and footer, I can change the rows and columns. So these are all the formatting options for this table.

We go over to the cell. If I select a cell, I can go and add borders to that song, again, just like I’m in Numbers here. And then I can format the text. So that’s how we work with tables in a slide. Let’s take a look at charts. Click on charts, I have a number of different charts, we’re going to go with a basic bar chart here. Let’s bring this down a little bit. There’s my chart. How do I add data to this? Well, you’re gonna see down at the bottom here, we have edit chart data. When I click on this, a new window opens up and I’m able to edit the data. So let’s change this one to 20. And we’re going to go with we’re going to add another region in here, that’s going to add region three. And that’s going to add some Numbers in here. I’m just putting random Numbers 50. And let’s go with 78. And you’re going to see that I have my three regions there, I need to edit that again, I click on Edit chart data and I can edit it. This edit chart data only shows when you have the chart selected.

So if I go outside here, you’re going to see it no longer shows. So it will not show when you’re giving your presentation. But when you click on it, you are able to edit that chart data. With formatting, I can go over to chart here, I can change the chart style, basically the color, I can add options, I can add a title, a border a caption, I can change the chart font, I can change the chart colors. And when I swipe up, I can even change the chart type. So now let’s go and make this A to D line. And now we can see it as a line, I want to change it to a 3d bar. And now it’s a 3d bar. So we can easily change the chart type to fit our slide.

We also can format the axis as well as the series here. And then if I want to arrange it, I can arrange it. So now I have a few objects on my slide here, I’m going to cover some of them up here, we’re going to put text behind the owl here, you can just see it peeking out there a little bit can just see it just a little tip of it there. So I have these objects on there. Now what I like to do when I have multiple objects on a slide is show the object list. I want to see all of the objects so I can easily select them. If I wanted to select this text here, it’d be pretty difficult for me, because when I click on it, it’s going to select the owl. So how do I select that text? Well, you can do that through the object list. To do that, what we do is we go to View and then show object list. I usually leave this shown all the time. So I just click on it, we have my object list. So now I want to select that text, all I have to do is just go over to text here, and we can see that that is selected. I want to select my chart.

I click on the chart here. And now the chart is selected. So we can easily select our objects when we’re looking at them in an object list. This also allows us to rearrange them. And what I mean by rearranging them is placing them in a proper order like a stack a stack of cards. Right now I have this text behind the owl. I want it in front of the owl. How do I do that? Well, I could go over to a range here and then select the owl and put the owl to the back a few different steps there. It’s much easier to do When you’re looking at your object list, I want to bring the text above the owl, I just drag this up, we can see it’s above the owl.

And there it is, I do not have to go over to arrange and move the different objects around by moving them back and forward, I can do that. But it’s much easier to just grab the object over here in the list and then just move it where you want. With our arrange, we can also align them. So if you have a number of objects, and you want to align them, you want to align them to where they are all lined up along with each other, all you have to do is just select them. So let’s go and select a few items here. Actually, what I’m going to do is add a new slide, we’re going to go with a blank slide and I’m just going to add some texture.

This is usually where you will use something like this. So I have these different text objects here. Let’s go and move them around. Just drag them randomly here. And now what I want to do is I want to arrange these, maybe I want them all in a vertical line, I want them arranged on the left side. To do that, we just select them all. So I have them all selected, we can see they’re all selected here. And then if we go over to our format, and we go over to a range, you’re going to see a line, what I’m able to do is align these to the left, I can align them to the center, I can align them to the right, so let’s go with left. And now we can see they’re all aligned to the left. But they’re still not spaced properly. I’d like to have them evenly spaced. Well, that’s where we get into distribute, what I’m able to do is distribute the space evenly between them. So with these, what I want to do is distribute the space vertically. So now I just go over to distribute, I go vertically.

And now we can see they’re all nice and aligned properly, I have them aligned to the left, and the spaces distributed evenly between them. If I want to rotate them, I can rotate them. And then once I have them set, what I’m also able to do is lock them, so then I can’t accidentally move them. If you want to group a few of them together, you can do that as well. So I want to group these three together, this is all under a range. I go to group. And now those three are grouped together, I click on them, and they’re all grouped together.

If you want to add media, you can do that as well. I click on media, I can select from any photo in my photos app, I can create an image gallery, as well as add a movie web video, which means I can put a link into a YouTube video or Vimeo video, I can add music, record audio or even live video. With a live video, what it does is it turns on the camera and you’re going to be able to present yourself as live video in the presentation. If you have an image or media on your phone or iPad and it’s linked up with iCloud, you’re going to be able to select from your iPad or your iPhone, you’re going to be able to select a photo from those devices. So that’s how we add objects to our slides in Keynote.

Basically, an object is anything that we add to our slide. This could be a table, a chart, text, shape, or media, such as photos or movies. All of them are objects. Once we add that object, what we’re able to do is format it, our formatting options will change depending on what we have selected. So if we have a chart, we can change the chart type. If we have a table, we can change what that table looks like. If we have text, we can change the font. This is all under Format. And then we can also arrange them with a range we’re able to rotate them, move them around, we can group them, we can lock them to the slide. If you do have a lot of objects, I recommend showing the object list. So that’s how we work with objects in Keynote on the Mac.