If you selected the shapes in the right order, you should have a circle with the center cut out. You can move your mouse over each option to see a preview of what option each does, but for now, select Subtract. Now that you have two shapes selected, the Merge Shapes under the Drawing Tools/Format ribbon tab is enabled.Ĭlick the Merge Shapes drop-down to display the five choices: Union, Combine, Fragment, Intersect and Subtract. I’ll explain why in a moment, but for now let’s just see how the magic happens. You want to select the bigger circle first, then the smaller one. Press Ctrl and click each circle to select them both (or use ⌘ if you are working on a Mac). When they are aligned the shape will look like this: Next, drag the first circle over the top of the second, and use the alignment guides to align them, so they have the same center. If you resize it by holding Shift while moving one of the corner handles, it scales it evenly, and the proportions stay the same. Once you have the second circle, you want to size it down while keeping the same proportions. The quickest way to duplicate a shape is to select the circle and then drag it while holding the Ctrl key (for more keyboard shortcuts for Windows or Mac, check out our previous post 10 little-known keyboard shortcuts for editing in PowerPoint).

Now you’ll need a second circle of the same proportions, so simply make a copy. Make it fairly big, so you can work with it easily, but leave plenty of space to work.

Get PowerPoint Create a shapeįirst, add a circle to a blank page.

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