Select and Deselect Shapes in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

PowerPoint expects you first to make a selection, and then do something such as clicking a button to perform an action for the selected slide objects. If you cannot select an object, then you cannot modify it at all. Although this tutorial explains how you can select shapes on a slide, the process works the same way for any other slide object.

Follow these steps to select shapes and other slide objects in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows:

Select or Deselect a Single Shape

Click a shape to select it. Figure 1, below, shows a single shape selected on the slide. To deselect the shape, click anywhere on the slide away from the shape, or Ctrl + click (or Shift + click) on the selected shape.

Figure 1: A single shape selected on the slide

Select a Shape that's Behind Another Shape

To select a shape that's behind some other shape and not easily selected or visible, first select any other shape, and then press the Tab key several times to rotate among all the objects on your slide until the shape you want is selected. If you pressed Tab quickly and missed selecting a shape, you can press Shift + Tab to reverse the entire tab selection process.

You can also use the Selection Pane to select.

Select or Deselect Multiple Shapes

To select more than one shape, use any of these options:

• Click a shape to select it and then Ctrl + click (or Shift + click) another shape to select it. Repeat the same process to select more shapes on the slide. Figure 2, below, shows two shapes have been selected.
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  Figure 2: Two shapes selected on the slide
• Place your cursor on the blank area of the slide (area that has no selectable content), or even click on the area outside the slide. Then, click and drag to draw a marquee with your cursor over the shapes you want to select, as shown in Figure 3, below. This works best when the shapes you want to select are placed fairly close to each other.
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  Figure 3: Draw a marquee over the shapes to select them
• Press Ctrl + A to select all the slide objects on the slide then deselect the ones that are not shapes which you don't want to be the part of the selection. To do so, press Ctrl + click (or Shift + click) on unwanted objects to deselect them, as shown in Figure 4, below. This works best if you have a slide with many shapes and a title. Since Ctrl + A also selects the title, you can thereafter deselect the title so that the selection is limited to shapes on the slide.
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  Figure 4: Slide with all shapes selected except a single deselected shape
• You can use the Selection Pane to make an accurate selection, as explained in another tutorial.

So, as you can see, there are various ways to select and deselect shapes in PowerPoint. Choose how you want to select, or even combine these techniques as needed.