When your map is first opened in PowerPoint the key is positioned over the top right of the map, rather than to one side as in your browser. Normally there is some free space on your slide that will accommodate your key, without hiding important map details.

Maps can have multiple keys, and we will discuss these in a bit more detail below, but for the simple map with only one key, often the easiest way to position it where you want is to drag it there with the mouse. If you find that this doesn't work as you expect, because either not enough, or too many things move, then it's time to start looking at how map items are grouped together.

To make dragging collections of things about your map easier, there are several layers of grouped objects in every map. This is great when you want to move whole collections of things, but sometimes can be confusing when you only want part of a group to move. To illustrate this we are going to start with a map that has a newspaper catchment and a drivetime catchment, that overlap. In addition then map will show the readership penetration of the newspaper. As a result this map will have two keys, that are shown down the right side of the map.

This is a good example of a map that can be improved with a little work in PowerPoint. First up we notice that the readership penetration key slightly obscures some tiles towards the bottom right of the map. This might not matter to us, but if we try to drag this key, to a new location, both the catchment key and the readership penetration key move together.

Looking at the Selection Pane you can see the various levels of the objects that make up the map layers. If we minimise the menus layers you see the that top levels consist of only Keys and Map. Under Keys you will see that the catchment and thematic key are separate objects. Though at this moment in time as they still fall under the keys group they cannot be selected. To access them as a separate object you will need to ungroup them.

To ungroup these, select the object layer then go to Drawing → Arrange → Ungroup

After Ungrouping, both of the groups are selected themselves. Now the two keys are ungrouped if you clear the selection by clicking on an open area of map, then select either the catchment key or thematic key you will find that it is possible to move that key without effecting the other. You can move objects either by dragging with your mouse, or with the cursor keys on your keyboard. The advantage of using the cursor keys is that you don't risk accidentally changing your selection by clicking on something else.

A further way of controlling the position of the key is to use the Drawing Tools → Format → Size → Position dialogue. With just the thematic key selected (Highlight in the Selection Pane), you can open the Size drop down menu (click the small arrow in the bottom right corner of the Size menu) and navigate to the Position Tab. (Please note the Drawing Tools Format tab only appears when an object is selected and auto hides when all selections are cleared.)

The Position menu allows you to control very accurately the position of objects on the page, and because there is no clicking on the map, you again don't have the problem of accidentally selecting something different. This is particularly useful for positioning keys, as you will often want to position them in the corners of the page. So for example in the following image the key was positioned at 0.2cm from the page top and 0.2cm from the page top-left.

In this instance we still find that it is difficult to position the readership penetration key on the slide without it overlapping important map objects, so we might have to instead consider resizing it.