Keynote provides several tools to help you arrange items on your slide canvas with great precision, including customizable alignment guides and gridlines to help you keep object positions even on slides and consistent between slides. Objects can be grouped together, making it easier to manipulate sets of objects, and locked into position to prevent them from being moved while you work. In addition, objects on a slide can be layered (overlapped) to create the effect of depth on the slide.
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To move an object to a new location on the slide, drag it. Avoid dragging the object by its selection handles because you may inadvertently resize it.
To precisely align objects as you drag them around, you can use alignment guides and gridlines. See Using Alignment and Relative Spacing Guides and Using Master Gridlines for details.
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To constrain the object’s motion to horizontal, vertical, or a 45-degree angle, start dragging the object while holding down the Shift key.
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To move the object in small increments, press one of the arrow keys, causing the object to move a point at a time. To move the object ten points at a time, hold down the Shift key while pressing an arrow key.
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To show the position of the object when you move it, choose Keynote > Preferences, and then select “Show size and position when moving objects” in the General pane.
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To move text or an object inside another object, select the object and choose Edit > Cut. Place the insertion point where you want the object to appear, and then choose Edit > Paste.
To learn about other ways of positioning and arranging objects, see the relevant topics, listed below: