How to enable and merge Shapes in PowerPoint

While creating a presentation for school or office, you might need to merge two shapes in Microsoft PowerPoint. Let’s assume that you are trying to show a comparison in your PowerPoint presentation, and you need to do it visually. The shapes and graphs are handy in those cases. You can combine two or more shapes to make a new one and display a comparison or anything else in a different way.

Merge two shapes in Microsoft PowerPoint

To merge two or more shapes in PowerPoint slides, you can use Combine, Union, Intersect, Subtract, etc. options to make a new shape. Follow these steps-

1. Open a slide where you want to show the combined shape.
2. Go to the Insert tab.
3. Expand the Shapes menu and add both shapes.
4. Place them as per your needs.
5. Select both shapes and go to the Shape Format tab.
6. Click the Merge Shapes button.
7. Select Combine from the list.

At first, you need to open a slide where you want to show the combined shape in your presentation. After that, you need to insert two shapes that you want to merge. For that, switch to the Insert tab, expand the Shapes option, and select two or more shapes that you want to combine.

Now, you need to place them correctly. You must do that before combining, and one shape should overlap onto another.

Once done, select both shapes and go to the Shape Format tab.

Here you can find an option called Merge Shapes in the Insert Shapes section. Expand the list and select Combine.

You should see the result immediately.

For your information, there are more options other than Combine. For instance, you can find these-

• Union
• Fragment
• Intersect
• Subtract

All the outcomes are visible in the following image-

As mentioned earlier, you can combine more than two shapes. It is possible to combine the third shape afterward as well as at once. However, you cannot use other options (i.e., Intersect, Union, etc.) for more than two shapes.

Also, if you want, you can change the fill color and outline after as well as before combining them. However, if you’re going to show two different colors for different shapes, you need to choose that before merging.

Hope it helps.