Merge Shapes in Excel

Learn Excel from MrExcel Podcast, Episode 2055: Merge Shapes   

We're almost done podcasting all the tips in this book.  Click the ‘i’ in the top-right hand corner to get to the playlist of all of these podcasts. 

Alright, it's weird Excel does shapes and I never talk about shapes because it's not adding numbers up or anything like that, but you can add a shape to excel. BAM, like that.  All kinds of special formatting that you can do, you know, you have your formats that are built in there.  Now that's probably using the Office 2007, 2010 formatting because of the glow but you can also rotate the shape.  Some shapes - let's change the shape here to some of these arrows, have extra inflection points so those yellow inflection points you can make parts of it narrow or thin or thick.  Lots of different things you can do with these shapes including, if you get into the Shape Tools Format, there are a bunch of effects.  So there's some Presets here.  We're going to add some extrusions, even go into Shape Effects, 3-D Rotation, rotate the shapes.  And if we go into Shape Effects, Presets, 3-D Options, there’s settings over here where you can change the material, even the depth.  Alright, so instead of 20 point – Watch! Look at that.  So as I increase, so I can create these awesome 3-D shapes. 

So, all kinds of special cool things you can do with your shapes, alright.  But, you know, we're kind of limited to those building shapes.  And so, I know I spent the whole last week talking about Word.  No Word today.  PowerPoint, Insert, so - PowerPoint has two cool tricks that we don't have in Excel.  First thing I'm going to do here is I'm going to build a little cloud shape like that and then I'm going to build a second shape, maybe a lightning bolt like that.  And then I'm going to take these two shapes and select them both like this and PowerPoint offers this awesome Merge Shapes so I can create a union of the shapes.  Alright, so now I've created a brand new shape and from here in PowerPoint, I can take the shape Ctrl+C, go back to Excel, Paste Ctrl+V and now I can apply all of that same formatting that we can do to a regular shape to this new super shape.  Alright, so cool, cool things you can do there changing the material and a whole bit to create some wild, wild, wild, wild shapes using PowerPoint. 

And, so I got this tip from Sam on the Excel team.  Sam pointed out that in addition to the options that we have, like that was a union, if I would Insert a Shape, and this will be a circle.  Now to create a perfect circle you hold on Shift, so there's my nice little circle.  I choose the original shape, put the new shape on top of choosy little shape, choose the second shape.  Underneath Merge Shapes, I can Combine, I can Fragment, Intersect or I can Subtract, alright.  So I've now created a shape with a hole in the other shape.  And here, another cool PowerPoint trick is if I want to change the fill color, so Shape Fill, they offer an Eyedropper.  So now let's get something here that we want to see.  So I'll go to the MrExcel website and then back to PowerPoint.  I'll use Insert, Screen Clipping.  This is usually found under Screenshot at the bottom.  I've right-clicked, and added that to all of my Quick Access Toolbar.  Items, Screen Clipping, so I'll choose something I want to copy the colors from, alright.  Choose the shape, go to Shape Fill, use the Eyedropper and fill it with the green for the MrExcel Excel book, alright. And then again, from here Copy, go back to Excel, paste Ctrl+V, and I've created a shape that I can do all kinds of formatting to, alright. 

When will you ever need this?   I have no idea when you'll ever need this but if there's some day where you have to create some cool looking, weird shape, just remember you can go to PowerPoint create your own union of shapes.  It becomes an official shape and then you can use that in Excel.

Alright, well this tip and a whole bunch of other tips are in this book, MrExcel XL, the 40 Greatest Excel Tips of All Time.  This completes the bone is 30, the 30 extra tips for Excel’s 30th birthday.  So a total of 70 tips in the book, full-color, 10 bucks is an e-book, 25 bucks in print.  Click the “i” in the top-right hand corner to get to that book. 

Alright, episode recap.  Thanks to Sam Rad from the Excel team.  Shapes in Excel can be formatted with all kinds of special formats, extrusions, bevels, glow, shadow.  You can rotate the shapes, change the inflection points.  But there's a few things that PowerPoint offers in this area that Excel does not offer.  You can create two shapes and merge the shapes as a union or you can subtract shapes in PowerPoint and then copy them and bring them back to Excel.  Also, PowerPoint has the eyedropper that you can use to color your shapes or whatever.  Sure, yeah, you can go to Photoshop and use the eyedropper there.  But you already have Office so, you know, what the heck.  Quick way to get the RGB codes.  Well, not even the RGB code, just quickly apply the right color to a shape and then bring that back to Excel.

Well hey, I want to thank you for stopping by.  We'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.