Shapes, pictures and media — Nixt Slides docs

New shapes are added to the current slide, in front of everything already on it, and are selected straight away. Every command on this page can be undone.

Add a text box

Choose Insert › Text › Add a text box.
Double-click the new box to type into it. See Type or change text.

The box is placed left of centre, 40% of the slide’s width wide.

Add a rectangle or an ellipse

Choose Insert › Shapes › Add a rectangle or Add an ellipse.
Double-click the shape to type text into it.

The shape is placed near the middle of the slide with a pale lavender fill, a thin indigo outline and centred text. The rectangle has rounded corners. To change the look, use Shape fill or Quick styles.

Add a picture

Choose Insert › Media › Add a picture.
Choose a PNG, JPEG, GIF or WebP file.

The picture is placed in the centre of the slide in a frame with the picture’s own proportions: half the width of the slide, or shorter when a tall picture would otherwise run off the bottom. A photo taken on a phone is placed the way up it is shown. The picture is stored inside the presentation when you save.

A picture that can’t be displayed is shown as a grey box labelled “Picture”.

Select shapes

One shape: click it. It gets a coloured outline and eight handles.
Several shapes: click the first, then hold Shift and click each of the others. Shift-click a selected shape to take it out of the selection.
Every shape on the slide: press ⌘A (Ctrl+A).

When several shapes are selected, the first one you selected has the handles and the others have an outline only. Commands that act on one shape — such as fill, Quick styles, text formatting, stacking order and the slide inspector — act on that first shape. Commands that act on several — lining up, spacing out and grouping — use them all.

Going to another slide clears the selection.

Shapes inside a group are selected as the whole group. Items that the slide master or layout place behind the slide are edited in the slide master view; see Editing the slide master.

Move and resize a shape

Set a shape’s position and size by typing them in the slide inspector:

Select the shape.
Choose More › Slide inspector.
Under SELECTED SHAPE, click in X, Y, Width or Height and type a new value in points.
Press Return (Enter) to apply it. A value you type is applied only when you press Return.

X and Y are the position of the shape’s top-left corner, measured from the top-left corner of the slide. A 16:9 slide is 960 points wide and a 4:3 slide is 720 points wide; both are 540 points tall. A shape can’t be made narrower or shorter than 12 points. Values are shown rounded to whole points.

Several changes to the same shape in a row are merged into one undo step, named “Move”. Resizing a group scales the shapes inside it.

Fill a shape with a colour

Select the shape.
On Home › Arrange, click Shape fill. The bar under its icon shows the current fill.
Choose a colour, or No colour.

Choosing a colour replaces any gradient on the shape. For table cells, use Cell shading on the Table tab instead.

The colour palette

The same palette is used for shape fill, cell shading and the slide background:

THIS DECK’S COLOURS — the six accent colours of the presentation’s colour scheme. They change when you change the scheme on Design › Themes.
A fixed set of 18 colours: a row of neutrals from near-black to white, a row of six hues (indigo, blue, green, amber, red and plum), and a row of pale tints of those hues.
No colour — removes the fill.

The current colour has a highlighted border.

Quick styles

A Quick style sets a shape’s fill, outline and the colour of all its text in one step.

Select the shape.
On Home › Drawing, click the palette button (tooltip “Quick styles — fill, outline and text colour in one step”).
In the Quick styles dialog, click a style. Each swatch is drawn the way the shape will look.

Click Cancel to close the dialog without a change.

Style	Fill	Outline	Text
Outline	None	Indigo	Near-black
Subtle	Pale lavender	Light lavender	Dark indigo
Solid	Indigo	Darker indigo	White
Muted	Warm off-white	Light grey	Near-black
Alert	Pale red	Red	Dark red
Fade	Gradient from light to dark indigo, top to bottom	Dark indigo	White
Dawn	Diagonal gradient from peach to dusty rose	Dusty rose	Dark brown
None	None	None	Near-black

A Quick style is one undo step, named after the style — for example “Solid style”.

Bring a shape to the front or send it to the back

Select the shape.
On Home › Arrange, click Bring to front (up arrow) or Send to back (down arrow).

The shape moves all the way to the front or back of the slide.

Line up and space out shapes

Select two or more shapes with Shift-click, then use Home › Align. The shapes are lined up against each other — against the edges of the area they cover together — not against the slide.

Button (tooltip)	Result
Line up on the left	Left edges line up with the leftmost shape
Centre across	Shapes are centred horizontally on the middle of the selection
Line up on the right	Right edges line up with the rightmost shape
Line up along the top	Top edges line up with the highest shape
Centre down	Shapes are centred vertically on the middle of the selection
Line up along the bottom	Bottom edges line up with the lowest shape
Space them out evenly across	Needs three or more shapes. The leftmost and rightmost stay put and the others move so the gaps between shapes are equal.
Space them out evenly down	Needs three or more shapes. The top and bottom shapes stay put and the gaps between shapes become equal.

With fewer shapes selected, the line-up buttons show “Shift-click a second shape to line them up” and the spacing buttons show “Select three or more shapes to space them out”.

Group and ungroup shapes

A group moves and resizes as one shape.

Group

Select two or more shapes with Shift-click.
On Home › Arrange, click Group the selected shapes, or press ⌘G (Ctrl+G).

The group takes the place in the stacking order of the frontmost shape in it, and is selected. Pressing ⌘G with fewer than two shapes selected shows “Select more than one shape to group — shift-click a second one.”

Ungroup

Select the group.
On Home › Arrange, click Ungroup — leave the shapes where they are drawn, or press ⇧⌘G (Ctrl+Shift+G).

The shapes stay exactly where they were drawn, and the first of them is selected.

Groups and animations

Only shapes directly on the slide can have animations, so:

Grouping removes the animations of the shapes that go into the group. The status bar says, for example, “Grouped. 1 animation went with the shapes; the group can have one of its own.”
Ungrouping removes the group’s animation, with the message “Ungrouped. The animation belonged to the group, which is gone.”

Undo puts the animations back.

Groups from PowerPoint files, including groups inside groups, are displayed and move as one.

Delete a shape

Select the shape, then do one of these:

Press Delete or Backspace.
On Home › Arrange, click Delete the shape.
In the slide inspector, click Delete shape.

When several shapes are selected, the first one you selected is deleted.

If the shape had an animation, it is removed too, and the status bar says “The shape is gone, and so is the animation that brought it on.”

Shapes from PowerPoint files

Item	How it’s shown
Rectangles, rounded rectangles and ellipses	Drawn in their own shape
Solid fills and outlines	Drawn
Linear gradient fills	Drawn
Drop shadows (outer shadows)	Drawn
Rotation and flipping	Drawn
Pictures	Drawn
Connector lines	Drawn as a straight line
Groups	Drawn and moved as one
SmartArt, equations and other embedded objects	A grey box labelled “Object”
Charts	See Charts

Every shape from a PowerPoint file is kept in the file when you save, as long as you don’t change that shape.

You can move, resize and line up a chart, a connector line or an object shown as a labelled box, change the slide size, and duplicate its slide: it’s saved as the same object with its new position and size. For what other changes rewrite, see File formats and compatibility.