PowerPoint won’t let me group objects: Causes and fixes

Microsoft Powerpoint offers its users an effective range of functional tools to allow for both the creation of presentations, slides, documents, and more. Users can both use a set template to create their presentations or make their own using the tools provided to create the presentation. However, it’s not without its errors, in this case, the error that prevents users from grouping objects in PowerPoint. When preparing presentations, Microsoft PowerPoint’s grouping function may be quite handy. It allows you to move several items as a single unit, which is faster than moving them separately. Furthermore, moving items maintain their location in respect to one another as a group. There are multiple reasons why users can’t group items in PowerPoint, from both placeholder issues to errors regarding the content on the screen. ​​In this blog, we will be looking at solutions to help users resolve “PowerPoint won’t let me group objects” and find possible solutions to help prevent the error from occurring again. We will also address some of the issues that can cause “PowerPoint won’t let me group objects” so users are more aware of what they are dealing with and what approaches they need to take to resolve “PowerPoint won’t let me group objects”. Follow the step-by-step process below to see how you can resolve “PowerPoint won’t let me group objects”.

Step by step process – PowerPoint won’t let me group objects, How to fix

  1. Open a Powerpoint document.
  2. Now click on “View”.
  3. Click on “Master”.
  4. Now click on “Slide Master”.
  5. Now select the items that are grouping.
  6. Now click on “Insert Placeholder”.
  7. Now insert any images and text within the placeholder.
  8. After that click on “Home”.
  9. Now click on “Arrange”.
  10. Finally, click on “Group”.

You can’t group items if they are from multiple areas of placement, some of your content is free to place and others are in a placeholder used to create a more organized approach to your documents, you can insert text and images in placeholders and they make your presentations look more sophisticated in terms of layout. However, if we make all the items be a part of a placeholder they will be in a layout where you can group the items. You can choose to remove the placeholder from items which will also help them to the group, however, this approach will yield a better response since you don’t have to interrupt the playout plus it also gives you the opportunity to properly lay the free laying images better.

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Placeholders cannot be grouped with other objects

The most typical reason for not being able to group items is because one of them is a placeholder. You can’t group placeholders with other sorts of objects in PowerPoint, such as a shape, an image, or a text box (or even other placeholders).

It’s crucial to distinguish between a placeholder (which is part of a layout) and a text box (which you chose by clicking Insert and then selecting Text Box).

A title placeholder and a content placeholder, for example, may be found in the Title and Content layout. Text, an image, a SmartArt object, a chart, a table, and other sorts of objects can all be placed in a content placeholder.

Some element combinations just cannot be grouped in PowerPoint. We put two text boxes in our example, which we could group, and then added a third image. We discovered that we were unable to group the image with either of the text boxes. You could believe that the issue is with the image. Wrong! It’s all about the text boxes.

You can’t use the Group command on a placeholder-filled selection unless all of the components are placeholders. Because the text boxes are both placeholders, we could group them together, but when we added an element that wasn’t a placeholder – the picture – the group option vanished.

You also can’t group a table, which adds to the confusion. To be more specific, the Group command is not accessible when your selection contains a table. If you want a truly inconvenient workaround, you may ungroup the table and then use the Group command to transform the individual cells into shapes.

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The Group Command Has Shortcuts

We utilized the ribbon commands to the group so that we could show the grayed-out Group command, although keyboard shortcuts are typically preferred since they are faster. Ctrl + g is the keyboard shortcut for Grouping.

By ungrouping a group, you may get it back to its individual pieces. The ungroup command can be found on the ribbon, and you can see it in the photos above, albeit it’s greyed out. Ctrl + shift + g is the keyboard shortcut for ungrouping.

Worksheets and Tables

You can’t group tables and spreadsheets that you put into a PowerPoint slide. You won’t be able to include a table in a group if you copy a table from a Word document and paste it into a slide. There are a couple of options for getting past this restriction. If the table or worksheet is complicated, the simplest option is to capture the table or worksheet as an image and put the image into the presentation using Windows’ built-in Snipping Tool. You will not, however, be able to change it afterward because it is an image.

Instead, edit the item in the original file (for example, the table in a Word document or the worksheet in an Excel spreadsheet) and use the Snipping Tool to make a new picture of it. You could add a text box to your slide and manually type in the table or worksheet’s contents if the table or worksheet is short and simple. The freshly formed table or spreadsheet may be grouped and edited. Manually inputting and formatting the material, on the other hand, might take a long time.

In-depth – Step by step process – PowerPoint won’t let me group objects, How to fix

  • Open a Powerpoint document.
  • Now click on “View”.
  • Now click on “Slide Master”.
  • Select the items that are grouping.
  • Then click on “Insert Placeholder”.
  • Now insert any images and text within the placeholder.
  • After that click on “Home”.
  • Now click on “Arrange”.
  • Finally, click on “Group”.

That’s it for this Blog thank you for taking time out to read our content, please feel free to email our team about how it went if you followed the steps or if you need more help with the questions we answered in this Blog.

Saajid Gangat

Saajid Gangat has been a researcher and content writer at Business Tech Planet since 2021. Saajid is a tech-savvy writer with expertise in web and graphic design and has extensive knowledge of Microsoft 365, Adobe, Shopify, WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, and more! You can connect with Saajid on Linkedin.

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