Learn to convert Icons to Shapes in PowerPoint

PowerPoint provides 500+ icons in SVG format. I recently published a blog which has a downloadable version of all icons in a PPTX file. Scalable vector graphic format icons cannot be edited inside PowerPoint. You cannot treat them like any other PowerPoint shape. But now, we can convert icons into shapes. Once converted to shapes all the PowerPoint shape features available. You can also use the Merge Shapes option to combine or subtract shapes. Here is how you do it:

insert a new shape,  resize it as required , right click on it  and choose Convert To Shapes.

Read the dialogue which appears and click  Ok.

The icon may get converted to one or more shapes. If it has more than one shape, it will be in a grouped state. So it is a good idea to right click on it and try Ungroup. If Ungroup option is inactive, there is only one shape.

Here we have three shapes. Now the shapes can be used like any other PowerPoint shape.

What to do with the shapes?

Once Icons are converted to shapes, there are few things which can really add value. Color and animation. I will write separate blog for this but here is an example.

The icon above is from the Analytics category. It is a speedometer icon which is often used in performance management. Management dashboards showing KPIs often use this type of speedometer graphic. Here is how we can enhance the speedometer icon after it is converted to shapes.

With Animation, the needle can be made to move to show the current state of performance.

More stuff on icons coming soon…