Inserting, reshaping, and formatting shapes: Rectangles, arrows, stars, and banners

- [Instructor] Excel has a variety of shapes, arrows, stars, and banners that you can add to a worksheet. Sometimes you're just trying to enliven the appearance of the worksheet, or to point out certain numbers that deserve special attention, like what we're seeing on this worksheet here. That's a hexagon off to the right with an arrow pointing to the cells. And any time you create a shape that encompasses a space, you can put text in it. The features are all available in the Insert tab. If you're not using Excel 365 with the latest updates, you're probably seeing the word Shapes already after you click Insert; tends to be in this general section here off to the right. But if you see Illustrations, click it, and then Shapes. Well over 150 different shapes here. All different kinds. If you choose rectangle, for example, click and drag, we can make this as wide or as tall as we want. If you want it to be a perfect square, hold down the Shift key. If you want it to draw a perfect circle, you'll pick the oval, and then hold down the Shift key. And when you are making these size changes too, be sure to let go of the mouse first if you are holding down the Shift key. So, I could type in right here, 2019 Sales. I probably wouldn't leave the font looking like that. Click the border, and we first make a quick change this way, maybe I like that look there. If I do, I'll probably change the font. But we can jump over to the Home tab and use some of those familiar features that most Excel users are familiar with. For example, bold, make the font bigger, that sort of thing. And then we can center it, top, bottom, and left, right, if needed, make it italics, and so on, change the font color, and on and on and on. And if that were not enough, we can go to that Format tab, that contextual tab that appears when a shape is selected. And consider some shape effects. Might want to to put a shadow around it, tons of options here. If you're not careful, you'll waste a lot of time. And we can come back and revisit these, and there are certainly opportunities for experimenting with all kinds of variations. Again, sometimes the effect is just to enliven the worksheet. If you want to use an arrow to connect this with certain text like we see to the right, that's fairly straightforward too. And notice too, that on the Format tab when it's active, because a shape is selected, we see that same, looks like an abbreviated set of options right here, but there's a drop arrow, and we see all these choices. Here's an arrow, we can click and drag, put it where we want, probably not thick enough, but up here, how about making it thicker? Changing the color along the way, we can move either end here, point to this number, that number. Notice how it sits on top of the box here, that could be okay, on the other hand, in that Format tab over to the right, we could send this backward, and there's some other choices here. When you're working with multiple shapes, sometimes you want them to overlap. So we've got controls over how those are being displayed as well, too. On the next sheet over, Drawing Re-shaping keys, just some ideas, some tips on using certain keys as we work with shapes. Remember, I had said earlier, if you are creating a rectangle, but would rather have it be a square, just hold down the Shift key. That's true of other shapes as well, too. Just one or two here as we go back to Insert, Illustrations, Shapes, I want to draw a hexagon. I could make it wide or tall or anything in between, but if I hold down that Shift key, it's going to be a perfect hexagon, provided I let go of the mouse first. On some shapes like this one, you will see an orange circle. As you drag this different directions of course, you're changing the look of the shape. Sometimes you want to make a shape bigger or smaller, but keep that same ratio of height to width. If you point to one of the corner handle, we could drag and take it anywhere we want, but when we're resizing and we hold down the Shift key, we're making this bigger or smaller while keeping that same ratio of height to width. It's called the aspect ratio, and sometimes you care about that. When you create a shape or change a shape, sometimes you'll hold down the Control key. I want this to be wider, but I want to keep the same center. So, I'm about to click and drag on the right, but I'll keep the Control key held down, and this happens. And again, experiment with some of those combinations of the Shift key, the Control key, either individually or together. When you create a shape, you can also create one from the center outward. So, Insert, Illustrations again, Shapes. Here's an oval. I want to create it from that midpoint right there, I want it to grow from that point, so I hold down the Control key, then click and drag, and we see what's happening. Remember, if I want it to be a circle, I'll hold down Shift, in this case, no, at some point I let go of the mouse, and then the Control key. And there could be times when you're creating certain angular figures, or you have squares or rectangles, let's bring back one of those again. I'll put text in this a bit later. I might want to reshape it slightly. I might want it to line up with those cell boundaries in the background. Any time you drag a handle with the Alt key held down, it has like a magnetic attraction to those cell boundaries. We can do this on all four sides if we wanted. And at different times, you want to have that certain look there, using the Alt key. So, again, these can be used with good effect. Most of the time, I think you will want to put text into them. Certain other points, maybe you're designing a logo, there are lots of options. And we didn't even get into many of the choices. I'm sure you saw some of them. Insert, Illustrations, Shapes, tons of options regarding block arrows, flow charts, stars and banners. Viable tools to not only enliven a worksheet, but sometimes provide informative information.