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Rotate a Shape

December 11, 2023 - by

Rotate a Shape

Problem: How do I rotate a shape? Can I morph a shape?

Strategy: When you select a shape, a green circle appears. Grab the green circle, click, and rotate the shape. This is a free rotation; you can rotate the shape in 360 degrees.

Additional Details: If you need to rotate exactly 90, 180, or 270 degrees, you can use the Rotate dropdown in the Arrange group of the Format tab.

A block L shape. Grab the green rotation and handle and drag left or right to rotate the shape.
Figure 1445. Drag green handle to rotate.

Most shapes have yellow inflection points. This shape has two such inflection points. Dragging an inflection point will change the size of one portion of a shape.

Two yellow inflection handles on the L shape let you make each leg narrow or wide.
Figure 1446. Drag the right-side diamond up.

For even more flexibility, right-click the shape and choose Edit Points. You now have a black handle at each corner of the shape. You can drag any handle in any direction to change the shape.

Gotcha: Dragging a point will remove the yellow inflection handles from the shape.

Using these tools, you can morph any of the 175 shapes into thousands of variations.

By dragging the black handles, you could make the L shape into some other shape, This is a five-ish sided polygon.
Figure 1447. Drag one corner of the shape.

This article is an excerpt from Power Excel With MrExcel

Title photo by Luís Eusébio on Unsplash