How to Resize, Enlarge and Reduce a Map in PowerPoint

In this video, I’m going to show you how to enlarge or reduce an editable PowerPoint map. We will be using the Australia Map for this exercise.

Our maps are easy to customize for your sales, marketing, or educational presentations or projects. Every object in one of our maps is an independent individual object that can be customized.

If you select an element with your pointer, you will notice you have eight small dots or handles around the outside of the selected object. This is your signal that you can customize your map. You can change the colors, change line weights, and change the text. For this training, we’re going to enlarge or reduce a map.

Grouping Your Map Elements

The key to enlarging or reducing your map is to select all the objects in the map, land, and text, and Group them. Grouping is the key. It keeps all the elements locked together as you change sizes. You can either go through the map, hold down the Shift Kkey and select everything, one element by one element with your cursor. This can be a pain if you have a lot of elements. Or you can click and drag your cursor around the map. You’ll see a light blue box that comes out as you drag across the slide. Every element that you surround should be highlighted. Once you have finished highlighting everything you can right click with your mouse on the PC or on the Mac, hold down the Control Key, and click and choose Group in the little window that pops up.

The map is now Grouped. It’s now one object that you can move around. You can still customize your map even when grouped. A single click will select the entire group and a second click will select an individual element.

Resizing Your Map

• We are now ready to resize. Click on the Grouped map. You should see eight handles around the entire collection. Hold down the Shift Key on your keyboard to help keep the map proportional, and click on one of the corner handles. I often use the lower right corner. Slide the corner handle up or down in a 45-degree direction to change the size. Sliding it up to make the map small, sliding it down and away makes it bigger. It works both ways.
• The map scales beautifully but the text doesn’t. The text moves to the correct location but doesn’t change sizes. While the map is still grouped, go up to the Ribbon and adjust the Text Size to something that looks nicer. You may need to adjust some of the text individually.
• PowerPoint has a built-in grid in the slide to help you line elements up. This works great for bullet lists but for maps, it can sometimes get in the way. I recommend turning off the Snap to Grid to make it easier to move elements around. In most of our maps it has been turned off. But if you copy and paste the map into a new PowerPoint presentation it will be on by default. Go to the View pull-down menu > Guides > Snap to Grid and uncheck the option. You can now move elements anywhere you want. Our PowerPoint Maps are compatible with Google Slides and Apple Keynote. The maps will re-size in the same manner as PowerPoint but you will need to adjust the text elements individually.