Since launching in 2006, Google Slides has steadily upped its game year on year to become a strong online alternative to other, more established, presentation software. Although Slides still has some work to do to up its overall functionality, Google has recently introduced some long-anticipated upgrades to basic features, and some entirely new tools, too.
We’ve taken a look and written up a general overview of what’s new, so you can make the most of these new features and get the best out of Google Slides. Updates from Google can be easy to miss, so check their blog to keep up to date with the latest additions.
New tools for resizing and positioning objects make adjusting text boxes, shapes and images much easier. These hugely underrated features can be accessed by right clicking an object, selecting Format options and then clicking Size & Position (see GIF below).
The new Size options enable more accurate resizing of objects. You can now adjust percentages and dimensions directly by typing new values into the provided input fields. You can also lock aspect ratios so that your object can resize without being warped or stretched.
The new Position tool makes it much easier to choose where an object should be positioned on the slide (centre, top left, etc.).
Similar to the resizing tools, the Rotate options allow for more specific object rotations. No longer do you have to rely on rotating objects by eye, under- or over-shooting and consequently eating your laptop in frustration. For good measure, Google have also added buttons for flipping your object horizontally and vertically.
New text fitting features give users more control over how text behaves within an object. Access these features by right clicking a text box or shape, select Format options, then click Text fitting (see GIF below).
New Indentation tools within the Text fitting tab allow more creative control when laying out text. These basic controls are great for fine-tuning text without altering the object it sits in, or hammering in extra spaces to move the text along (don’t ever do that please). Adjust by typing in the size of your desired indentation, in inches, into the provided input fields.
The Text fitting tab has some other handy options you can use to control indentations. These 3 options can be found in a handy drop down menu below Indentation labelled Special:
Last in this tab, but by no means least, is Padding. Before this update, all text boxes in Google Slides had a fixed margin around the edge of the text box. This meant that if you wanted to use the guides to align an object with a text box, the text would always be slightly misaligned. For example, if you left-aligned a text box and an object, the text would be a little bit to the right of where it should be because of the left-hand margin. You then had to try and line it all up by eye, and cause your inner graphic designer to throw a sweary tantrum.
But now, the four padding values (top, bottom, left and right) allow you to control the text box margins. So, if you want to perfectly left-align an object with some text, you can just adjust the left-hand margin to 0 and the text will be exactly where it should be.
If you’re excited to use these text formatting tools, but aren’t sure how to make the most of the typography in your presentation, check out this post for our top typography tips.
The long wait for guides is finally over! As presentation designers, grids and guides are an essential part of our slide arsenal at BrightCarbon. They are a vital part of setting up a new document, as we’ve detailed in our PowerPoint templates and masters resource.
Guides provide a consistent, accurate template for designing slides, and we couldn’t be happier that Google have finally included them in their program. To view guides, simply click on the View drop down tab at the top, select Guides and then Show guides.
Guides can be inserted and moved around the slide as you see fit. A really nice feature is that if you accidentally move one of your guides when trying to move an object on your slide, you can undo (CTRL + Z) and the guide will move straight back: a useful feature that is missing from Microsoft PowerPoint!
Whilst version history isn’t a new feature, it’s certainly changed with the latest update. One of Google Slides’ differentiating features is that everything you work on is automatically saved to the cloud. This eliminates the version control worries and opportunities to lose work that hasn’t saved properly.
Every time a Slides document is edited, Google saves it as a new version. Accessing these versions is easy. Just click File, go down to Version history then click See version history. Here you can see the time and date of the versions and who worked on them. It can be difficult to locate the version you need, however, especially if you’re not sure what time it was edited.
However, the latest update allows you to name the version you have been working on, almost like a ‘Save as’ feature, making it much easier to find the right version. To do this click File, navigate to Version history again and select Name current version.
You can also name older versions of the document. Open up the Version history again, click the time and date of the version you wish to change and type in a new name.
With upgrades to basic features and the inclusion of a few key tools, it’s clear that Google Slides is now a serious contender in presentation creation. While – admittedly – this update has included a lot of features that a lot of other presentation authoring tools seem to already have, Google have introduced them without changing their stand-out user interface, which makes it so easy to work with.
At BrightCarbon we are hopeful that Google will continue to impress us with even more updates in the future. We’d love to see more control over animations, with the ability to animate objects at precise times instead of in a fixed sequence. A selection panel would also make selecting layered items easier. Finally, introducing what PowerPoint call ‘Boolean’ tools (more on those here) and Adobe call ‘Pathfinder’ tools would make building custom shapes much easier. Until the next update, enjoy what new features Google have introduced and have fun making some killer presentations!
Leave a comment
As presentation nerds, we at BrightCarbon have had plenty of opportunity to get to know ins and outs of Google’s browser-based presentation tool. This guide will cover everything you need to know about Google Slides - from the very basics to the most advanced features - and will provide you with the know-how to make brilliant slides, quickly and easily.
If you're using Google Slides regularly then it's worth getting to know how you can integrate it with your other favorite Google Workspace programs - this time, Google Keep!
Your friendly neighborhood presentation nerds are back with an all-new article on Productivity tips and tricks for Google Drive to help you optimize your Google Drive experience and get the most out of Google Workspace.
Join the BrightCarbon mailing list for monthly invites and resources
Tell me more!The video animation looks AWESOME! Thank you sooooo much. I am very happy and proud with the result; this video is really convincing. Really really well done.
Elodie Maurer SES
Can you wrap text on an image in Slides? I’ve been searching all over the Internet, but it seems not. Maybe I’m just missing it? But if not, that’s ridiculous. Google needs to offer text wrapping in Slides!
Hi Nicole, I’m afraid we’ve observed the same thing – no automatic way of doing this! We’d recommend submitting feedback within Slides (click on the Help and Feedback button to do so) which will go direct to Google. Our team have done so as well!
thanks, joey, I appreciate your pointers – and your communication style. understanding that this was written a year ago already, i just want to express my own personal opinion (and maybe this is a generational thing) that “up” by itself is not a verb. a preposition or an adverb certainly, but not a verb please! we do have “increase,” “expand,”and “improve,” among other options…
Hi Brenda-Jean! So glad that you enjoyed the post. We do try to keep things informal and relaxed over here on the blog, but we definitely don’t want to cross a grammatical line. Up is really versatile, and verb is one of its many forms (check our friends Merriam and Webster for an official take, it’s a bit of a scroll – https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/up). It’s also an adjective, who knew?!
I’ve tried creating a simple rectangle on a google slide – dimensions 10 cm x 9 cm but when printed it’s dimensions are 11.5 x 10.4
This is obviously very frustrating!
Any thoughts on how to rectify this apart from trial and error?
Hi Roseanne!
Sounds frustrating! Have you tried adjusting the scale values when clicking the ‘more settings’ option in the print tab? When you click the drop down next to ‘Scale’ try selecting customised and keeping the value at 100.
Something else to bear in mind would be the size of your page on screen. Slides allows you to match your page to your paper size which should keep everything in the correct dimensions. You can adjust this by clicking ‘file’ and then clicking ‘page setup’. In the window that appears, click the drop down and select ‘custom’. From there you can type in the dimensions of the paper that you will print onto and therefore when printing, everything should be the correct size.
Hope this helps!
I’m so f*cking frustrated! I can’t get the text indentation stuff to go away! It keeps popping up and I can’t do it! PLEASE HELP ME!
Hey Samantha, not to worry! To hide the formatting options, click the ‘X’ at the top right-hand corner of the tab. It’s just below the ‘Present’ button. To get them back again, just right-click on your object and select ‘format options’.
It would be really awesome if they had a “view” option that would show you the dimensions (bounding box) of objects as you draw them. This sort of information is necessary to produce size-accurate pictures. Slides is good for making slides but it can also be used for drawing & printing figures. The google draw program is not as good. They should recognize this and add a few CAD features (such as bounding box size, and line length) that update in real-time as you draw the figure!
How to make the letter more loose, such like open kerning?
Hey Leung. I’m afraid at the minute Google Slides doesn’t support kerning. We’ve been hoping for this for a while too so fingers crossed it will become available soon!
In the meantime, there are lots of fonts available to use on Google Slides and some of them are looser than others. To browse through fonts, open the drop-down in the toolbar with your text selected to see all of the fonts. At the top of the menu, select ‘More fonts’ at the top.
Hopefully, you find one that’s more suitable!