Reorder Pictures in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows

PowerPoint enables you to do most positioning tasks for your pictures such as resizing, aligning, and grouping. In addition, you can also reorder pictures (or even a bunch of pictures and other slide objects such as shapes) on your slide using various ordering options available within PowerPoint.

Now, look at Figure 1 which has three slide objects, where two of them are pictures and one of them is just a rectangle shape. We want to reorder them so that the rectangle is placed between the larger and the smaller pictures, with the smaller picture placed above the other two objects.

Figure 1: Pictures and Rectangle placed on the slide

Follow these steps to learn more about reordering pictures in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows:

1. Select both pictures and the rectangle. Then align them to the center, and then to the middle of the slide. To learn how to align and distribute pictures and other slide objects to the center of a slide, refer to our Align and Distribute Pictures tutorial. When we aligned the pictures and the rectangle on our slide, the resultant slide ended up looking like what you can see in Figure 2, below. Note that the smaller picture (the flower) has been rendered invisible. This picture was intended to be our primary focus object for this slide. We now need to correct the order of pictures and other slide objects.
2. 
   Figure 2: Small picture hidden behind the rectangle
Note: The result of applying align to center and middle options may be different, depending upon the present order of your slide objects.
2. To achieve this objective, you can reorder the slide objects using any of the following ways:
1. Use the Arrange options. To learn more about Arrange options, refer to our Reorder Slide Objects tutorial. The linked tutorial pertains to shapes, but the concepts explained are applicable to all other slide objects, including pictures.
2. Within the Picture Tools Format tab of the Ribbon, locate the Arrange group, and click the Selection Pane button. This will bring up the Selection Task Pane. In this task pane, select the smallest picture which is now at the third place and hidden below the big picture and the rectangle, as shown in Figure 3.
3. 
   Figure 3: Small picture selected within the Selection Task Pane
4. Now, use the up arrow (highlighted in red within Figure 3) to move the small picture right above the big picture and the rectangle. Figure 4 shows the small picture is now atop everything else.
5. 
   Figure 4: Small picture re-ordered
3. After reordering, you can see the resultant arrangement of pictures on your slide, as shown in Figure 5.
4. 
   Figure 5: Pictures and Rectangle reordered properly
Note: To learn more about how to work with slide objects listed within Selection task pane, refer to our Select, Deselect, View, and Hide Shapes Using the Selection Task Pane tutorial.
4. Save your presentation.