Attributing and Positioning Callouts in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac

Callouts allow you to do so much. You can create pointers, add text indications and also create comic-book style speech and thought balloons. Combine them with illustrations or photos of characters (both human or animal) and you will create something that will attract the attention of your audience. Among the 16 Callout shapes available in PowerPoint, all cannot be used for text and thought balloons—most of the time, you will use 4 of these options. While Rectangular Callout, Rounded Rectangular Callout, and Oval Callout shapes are speech balloons, the Cloud Callout is essentially a thought balloon. You can see all of these in Figure 1, below.

Figure 1: Callouts suitable for speech and thought balloons

While it is important that you choose a Callout shape that's suitable for your intended use, what's even more important is how you attribute a callout to various characters and position it. Follow these steps to learn more in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac:

1. Open your presentation and navigate to the slide which includes a picture or drawing for which you want to add a Callout shape. Alternatively insert a new, suitable picture on your slide.
2. Access the Home tab of the Ribbon and click the Shape button (highlighted in red within Figure 2) to bring up the Shape gallery as shown in Figure 2. Within this gallery, select the Callouts option to open the Callouts sub-gallery. Then click on any suitable Callout within this sub-gallery, as shown highlighted in blue within Figure 2. We have selected the Cloud Callout option, since we need to visualize some thoughts of the characters in our picture.
3. 
   Figure 2: Callouts sub-gallery within the Shape gallery
3. Insert this selected Callout on the slide in the same way as you would insert a shape. Your slide may now look like what you see, as shown in Figure 3.
4. 
   Figure 3: Callout inserted shows a yellow diamond
4. Now, reposition the inserted Callout as required. Thereafter, look out for the yellow diamond handle on the Callout shape (highlighted in red within Figure 3, above). You need to drag this yellow diamond handle towards the character to which you want to attribute this Callout, as shown in Figure 4.
5. 
   Figure 4: Callout attributed to a person in the picture
5. Now, type some text within the Callout shape and format the text as required to make it easily readable, as shown in Figure 5.
6. 
   Figure 5: Text added within the Callout and formatted
6. Similarly, you can add one more Callout to the picture as shown in Figure 6. We used the same Cloud Callout shape again because we are again depicting some thoughts. You can use another Callout shape if that suits your requirement better.
7. 
   Figure 6: Another Callout added to the picture
7. Again, attribute this new Callout to the required person by dragging the yellow diamond to end up with the results shown in Figure 7.
8. 
   Figure 7: New Callout attributed to another person in the picture
8. Add the required text into this new Callout as shown in Figure 8.
9. 
   Figure 8: Text added within the new Callout
9. Format this added text to possess the same color, font, and size of the text within the first Callout, as shown in Figure 9.
10. 
    Figure 9: Text should look the same within all Callouts added to a picture
Tip: Notice that the callout on the left within Figure 9 does not overlap the character it's attributed to whereas the callout on the right actually does overlap its attributed character. Choose whatever option works best for you!
Once you have attributed your callout to a character on your slide, the next step is to make your callouts look better. You can learn more in our Formatting Callouts in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac tutorial.
10. Save your presentation often.