Use an edit icons in PPT 2016-2019

One of the new features of PPT 2016-2019 is the possibility to add icons. Icons are vector files. You can also use svg files which are another vector type. In other words, these pictures can easily be scaled, rotated or colored without any loss of quality.

You can find the feature under the Insert tab, just click the Icons button.

You can choose between different categories.

Select the icon(s) you want to use and click the Insert button.

Below you can see an icon from the Analysis category. The bars have been altered to a different color.

What do you need to do?

After inserting the icon right-click the icon and choose Convert to shape.

PPT asks you if you want to convert the object to a Microsoft Office drawing object. Click Yes.

At first it seems nothing has changed, but click on a detail of the shape and you will see that you now can select individual parts of the icon.

Adjust colour

Click the contextual Format tab and choose the Shape fill button in the Shape styles group and apply a new colour.

Repeat the process for the other parts.

Add text

Once the icon is converted you can add text to the shape.

Here's an example of a shopping cart.

After converting the icon you can see that the wheels and the basket are individual shapes. I have adjusted the color of both in the example.

Now if you select the icon you can ungroup it and rescale if necessary. Select only the basket and

format the text further using the contextual Format Shape tab and the Text fill button in the WordArt Styles group.

Edit points

Right-click the shape and choose the Edit points option.

In the example I moved two points to create the impression of movement.

Apply 3-D formatting

You can take it one step further by applying 3-D formatting.

Right-click the icon and choose Edit shape.

In Format shape task pane click the Effects button. Here's an example where I changed the border/depth and 3-D rotation.

So, to conclude icons can be edited to make them look better.

The supply of Microsoft is limited. There is no search possibility (although this seems to have changed in the 365 version).

On the internet you can find a lot of sites who offer free icons. I found the following sport series on Iconfinder.com.