Locking/Unlocking all items at once on a PowerPoint slide

Question

Office 365 on Win10-64 bit: I have several PowerPoint slides that contain a mixture of text, text boxes, and shapes such as arrows, circles, etc. I've tried using ctrl-A to select everything on the page and then selecting "Lock" from the context menu obtained by clicking the right mouse button, but that doesn't work because ctrl-A doesn't actually select anything but the text on the slide - not any of the objects. I've been able to select and lock everything by individually clicking on each object while holding the Ctrl down then selecting Lock, but that's way too cumbersome. Thanks :-)

Answer 1

Hello

I am Abdal and I would be glad to help you with your question.

One option to select all the elements on a PowerPoint slide is to use the "Group" feature.

Here's how:

Select all the elements on the slide by holding the Ctrl key and clicking on each one individually. Right-click on one of the selected elements and choose "Group" from the context menu. Once the elements are grouped, you can lock them by right-clicking on the group and choosing "Lock" from the context menu.

Alternatively, you can use the "Selection Pane" to select all the elements on the slide.

Here's how:

On the PowerPoint ribbon, go to the "Home" tab and click on the "Select" button. Click on "Selection Pane" in the dropdown menu. In the Selection Pane, you will see a list of all the elements on the slide, including text boxes, shapes, and other objects. Hold the Ctrl key and select all the elements on the slide. Right-click on one of the selected elements and choose "Lock" from the context menu. This will lock all the elements on the slide, so they cannot be edited.

I hope this information helps.

Regards,

Abdal

Answer 2

Glad Abdal's solved your problem.

Another approach is to use a little bit of VBA to lock or unlock all shapes in the current selection.

One advantage of this is that it works in at least some versions of PowerPoint that don't offer locking/unlocking in the selection pane. I tested on 2019 and it works nicely.

Sub LockSelected()

Dim oSh As Shape 

For Each oSh In ActiveWindow.Selection.ShapeRange 

    oSh.Locked = True 

Next 

End Sub

Sub UnlockSelected()

Dim oSh As Shape 

For Each oSh In ActiveWindow.Selection.ShapeRange 

    oSh.Locked = False 

Next 

End Sub

Answer 3

Abdal,

The second option you provided was just what I needed. Thankyou.