You can add different shapes from the drawing tool in Google Docs. The best thing is that you can edit and customize it by changing its border color, size, and thickness from the formatting options.
And if you don’t get the desired shape, you can insert the shape using images and special characters.
In this tutorial, we will learn the different steps to add shapes using the drawing tool, images, and special characters.
Steps to Add Shapes Using Drawing
- First, go to the Insert tab at the top to add the shape.
- Now, hover over the cursor to Drawing and select New.
- In the drawing window, click on the shapes icon on the left of the textbox.
- After that, select the category and the shape that you want to add to your document.
- Next, click and drag the cursor to draw the shape on the drawing sheet.
Resize and Rotate the shape
Once you select the shape, you can re-size and rotate it.
- For this, you need to select the shape by clicking on it and then dragging it from the corners to increase/decrease its size.
- And you can also rotate the shape from the top circle icon in any direction.
Customize the Shape
Customizing the shape by changing its border color, style, width, and size from the given options.
- First, you need to select the shape to apply the formatting options.
- Click on the paint icon to select the particular color for the background of the shape, or you can also choose the gradient background.
- And if you want to remove the color from the background, click Transparent.
- Similarly, click on the border icon to select the desired border color right next to the paint box.
- Next, border weight and border dash will help you to change the border’s thickness and line style.
- When you are done with all the formatting changes, click on the Save and Close option to insert the shape on the document.
- Now, the shape inserts, and if you want to resize it, select the shape and use the corners to extend the size.
- Click edit to make more changes to the shape as it brings you back to the drawing window.
Tip: Select the shape and press the backspace or delete key of your keyboard to delete the shape from your document.
Insert Shapes using Images
You can also add images with shapes using the web search, by URL, or directly upload from a computer. Use the below steps to add images.
- Click on the Insert Tab to show you a drop-down with a list of options.
- After that, go to Images and select Upload from the computer.
- Now, let’s add an example of a pentagon to the document.
- Once you insert the image, then you can make changes to it.
- Select the image first, adjust its size from its corners, and rotate it as you want.
- Next, change its border color, thickness, and style from the above options and select image options for more adjustments.
Insert Shapes using Special Characters
It is best to use special characters if you cannot find the shape that you want to insert.
- Go to Insert Tab and select the Special Characters from the drop-down.
- Then, search the keyword in the box and click on the desired shape.
- Google Docs give you many categories of special characters. That further separates into Symbol and Arrows drop-down list of options. So you can access any of these two categories to find out your particular shape.
- In Categories, you only have the recent characters that you might have already added to your document.
- Now, you can filter the category from the list, and here we like to select the emoji category to add the desired shape.
- Click on the character and then close this pop-up window. Your particular character inserts to the document.
- Even, you can change the size of the emoji from the above font size symbols which are + and –, just by selecting the character.
- And you can notice it will directly reflect on your document.
Note: You need to select the character only to increase/decrease its size in the document. As you can’t change the size of numbers and letters.