What's new in PowerPoint 2013-15 - Guides

Guides have always been useful, they allow you to position your objects correctly and optimally use the space on your slide. In PowerPoint 2013 there are some further improvements.

Guides are not visible when you start a new presentation, you have to activate them. You can do that by right-clicking your slide and choosing Grid and guides. Or by clicking on the View tab and checking the Guides box in the Show group. For those who like keyboard shortcuts press Alt+F9. Nothing new there.

What has changed then, well here's a list of changes:

1. You can add guides separately on individual slides, masters and slide layouts, all independent from one another, that is the most important change in my opinion.
2. You can add new guides directly from the right-click menu. Guides are added offset to an existing guideline.
3. You can change the color of your guides.
4. You can delete existing guides directly from the right-click menu.

To add a new guide, just right-click on an empty area of the slide. In the menu that appears choose Add vertical guide or Add horizontal guide line. Be aware that doing this will add a guide line next to an existing vertical or horizontal guide line, this will most probably not be the place where you want to add it.

To have more control you can add the guide line next to an already existing guide line of your choice. To do that right-click on the existing guide line of your choice. You will get a different menu, choose
Add vertical guide or Add horizontal guide.

You can of course still add a guide by dragging a guide combined with the Ctrl-key.

In a next entry we will discuss the three kinds of guides and there respective color.