By Geetesh Bajaj
Last month in PresentationXpert you learned how simple it is to draw a straight, point to point line in PowerPoint. Now we’ll move on to show you how you can draw a curved line in PowerPoint 2010.
Follow these steps to draw a curved line in PowerPoint 2010:
1. Launch PowerPoint 2010. Most of the time, PowerPoint will open with a new slide in a presentation — PowerPoint 2010 users can change the slide layout to Blank by selecting Home tab | Layout | Blank.
2. Within the Home or Insert tab of the Ribbon, click the Shapes button to view the Shapes gallery that you can see in Figure 1. Within the Lines section select Curve.
Figure 1: Curve selected
3. As soon as the curve shape is selected the cursor changes to a cross hair (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: Cross hair cursor
4. Click anywhere on the slide to establish the starting point of your curve. Thereafter, move the cursor bottom-right of the first point in an approximately 45-degree angle, as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Drawing a line
5. Click again. Now when you move the cursor leftward, you’ll see the curve bend (see Figure 4).
Figure 4: Drawing a curve
6. Click again after you move a little leftwards (like a triangular position) to establish a third point. Now move the cursor upwards to the first point, as shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5: Drawing a shape with a curve
7. Now click over the first point to close the shape. The shape gets filled by a solid color to denote that it has indeed been closed. You’ll also see the shape is surrounded by eight selection handles, as shown in Figure 6.
Figure 6: A closed shape drawn with curve
Tip: If you want just a curved line rather than a closed shape, don’t click on the starting point othe curved line.
8. Click anywhere on the slide to deselect the curve.
About the Author:
Geetesh Bajaj has been designing and training with PowerPoint for 15 years and is a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP (Most Valuable Professional.) He heads Indezine (www.indezine.com) a presentation design studio and content development organization based in Hyderabad, India. The site attracts more than a million page views each month and has thousands of free PowerPoint templates and other goodies for visitors to download. He also runs another PowerPoint- related site (http://www.ppted.com) that provides designer PowerPoint templates.
Geetesh also is the author of the best-selling book Cutting Edge PowerPoint for Dummies and three subsequent books on PowerPoint 2007 for Windows and one on PowerPoint 2008 for Mac.
