Layers: order, grouping and alignment

A slide is a stack of layers — photos, text, shapes — and every layout problem is either "that's in front of the wrong thing" or "those aren't lined up". Both live here. This is Advanced mode; Basic mode has no layer list.

The stack

The Layers tab lists everything on the current slide under the heading Stack, in paint order: top of the list is in front, and the background sits at the bottom.

Each row has an eye to hide the layer, a padlock to lock it, and a delete button. Clicking a row selects that layer and expands it with quick edits — the text content, a Replace button for a photo — so small changes don't need the full inspector.

Drag rows to reorder. That's the direct way to fix something being behind something else.

Selecting more than one

Three ways:

• Shift-click layers, on the canvas or in the list.
• Drag a box on the canvas starting from empty space. Everything it touches gets

selected. Hold Shift as you start to add to what's already selected.

• [[Ctrl A]] selects every visible, unlocked layer on the slide.

Esc clears the selection.

Groups

Layers that belong together — a headline and its underline, a badge and its number — can be grouped. Select two or more and press Group, or Ctrl G / ⌘ G.

After that, clicking any one of them selects the whole group, so it moves and scales as a unit and you can't knock one piece out of alignment by accident. That's the point of grouping, and it's also why a layer sometimes seems to "bring friends" when you click it — it's in a group. Ungroup (Ctrl Shift G) breaks it apart.

The selection bar

Select anything and a small bar appears near it:

• Duplicate and Delete.
• Lock, which freezes the layer where it is.
• Layer order — Bring to front, Bring forward, Send backward, Send to back. Handy

when the list is long and dragging is fiddly. The keyboard does the same: Ctrl ] and Ctrl [, and add Shift to go all the way.

• Align — left, center, right, top, middle, bottom. With three or more selected you

also get Space evenly across and Space evenly down.

• Group / Ungroup when two or more are selected.

Aligning properly

With several layers selected, the sidebar shows the full arrange panel, which is worth knowing about because it does two different things:

• Align to canvas lines things up against the slide itself. The As Group /

Individual switch decides whether the selection moves as one block or each layer lines up on its own. Centering three separate captions individually is not the same as centering the block of three, and this is where people get the wrong one.

• Space Evenly distributes the gaps — horizontally, vertically, or Tidy Up for

both at once. Space by Gap sets an exact number of pixels between them instead.

For fine work, arrow keys nudge the selection a pixel at a time, or ten pixels with Shift held.

Hiding and locking

Hiding a layer takes it out of the slide and out of the export, without deleting it. Useful for a template's alternative headline you might want back.

Locking keeps a layer visible but unmovable. Templates ship with some layers locked because they hold the design together — a locked layer greys out in the list, and unlocking is one click if you really do want to move it.