I have multiple slides in a presentation, and have been asked to add images at the top-right and top-left of each slide.

The images are roughly the same size, and I am trying to find a way to ensure that they not only align with each other (relatively easy), but are equal lengths away from each opposite edge (e.g. if the top-right-hand image is 3cm away from the right edge, the left-hand image is 3cm away from the left edge as well, etc.)


There are a couple of options that you can use.

  1. Turn on "View Ruler" (View/Show/Ruler). In addition to the rulers, you will also now see a vertical and horizontal dashed line centered on the slide. These are guidelines, and you can drag them anywhere on the slide you want. To add a new line, place your cursor on whichever line you want to duplicate (vertical or horizontal), hold down the CTRL key, and drag the new line to the appropriate location.

    The trickiest part is making sure that the guides are exactly 3 cm from the edge. I don't know of any way that you can place the guides, except by dragging them, and the zero point of the ruler is set to the middle of the slide, so it requires some math to figure out exactly where 3 cm from the edge is on the ruler.

    You can then use these guides to place your images. If you add the guides to your master slides, they will appear on every new slide you create.

enter image description here With ruler view enabled

enter image description here With vertical guides moved to edges of frame

  1. The other option--not as elegant, but quick and easy. is to draw a square/rectangle with a width that is exactly the dimensions of your spacing. Then, you can drag that rectangle to the very edge of the slide, and align your graphic element up with the edge of the rectangle. Because the width of the rectangle is exactly 3 cm, you can drag the rectangle to the right or left side.

    The problem with this process is that you have to remember to remove the rectangle from the page when you are done using it.

enter image description here

  • +1 for the rectangle trick. I actually do this all the time in InDesign (... maybe I shouldn't admit to that though) – Scribblemacher May 12 '18 at 1:36
  • I just would add to change the dimensions of the original file, so it is easier to round numbers. – Rafael May 14 '18 at 4:53

Can you set the distance that shift plus I remove each object? Because if you can set up the 3 mm then you could snap the objects to each corner and just shift arrow up and left for whatever direction as needed.

In other words you want to adjust the distance for the warrows.


With a bit of VBA, you can create guides exactly where you want them (at least in recent Windows versions of PPT; haven't tried this on Mac, in case that's relevant). This adds a vertical guide at 72 points from the left of the slide and a horizontal guide at 72 points from the top of the slide:

Sub AddGuides()

    With ActivePresentation.Guides
        .Add ppVerticalGuide, 72
    End With

    With ActivePresentation.Guides
        .Add ppHorizontalGuide, 72
    End With

End Sub

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