Smart Art re-sizing issue

Anonymous
2010-02-16T20:44:14+00:00

I often need to use hierarchies in presentations and documents (word or powerpoint). The smart art function seems like a dream for this sort of thing, however, it never works. Anything more than the simplest graphic is hopelessly mis-sized.  The problem is, as you add more layers, the boxes and the size shrink. When you attempt to change the size on one box (eg make it bigger), the other boxes change (become even smaller) relative to the first box. It is like some sort of cruel joke: the more you try to fix one box, the more jumbled the other boxes become. A hierarchy would be far more useful if you could adjust the sizes of individual boxes to show their relative importance or to emphasize a particular part.

There must be some way to lock the the size/position of part of the graphic or to adjust only specific parts without effecting the others. If not, then this "tool" strikes me as completely useless and I wonder if anyone anywhere in the world ever uses it? I have not been able to find any help any place else, so this is my last hope.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2010-02-18T00:29:09+00:00

Yeah, I read that help article before I posted here. It does not answer the question.

Let me restate the problem. When you change the size of one box, the others change as well. I suppose that it is intended to be relative size change (as discussed in the help article), but it does not work with hierarchies of more than three levels or when resizing several boxes. I guess the algorithms which are meant to auto adjust the relative size where not constructed to handle anything more than the most simple graphic.

So, again, the question is: **is there a way to disable the auto re-sizing of shapes.**In other words, to prevent powerpoint (or word) from auto re-sizing boxes and only change the size of a single box.

This problem seems to be worse in powerpoint, but is easily demonstrated in word as well.

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-03-24T16:50:38+00:00

    Probably not the best option, but given the absence of any other alternatives...

    You can Convert the SmartArt to Shapes (Context menu). When you do that, PowerPoint also keeps them together in a Group and (best, in my view) makes the individual shapes "available" in the Select Pane. From here on, you can edit the individual elements.

    Of course, what you lost in the process, is the ability to edit them as SmartArt... oh well, not a perfect world :(

    Hoping this helps, 

    Razvan:-)

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-04-18T12:34:27+00:00

    Hi there,

    I'm using Mac Office 2011 and I think I might have found way to deal with this ****. 

    So, create the Smart Art you need eg. create all the boxes and stuff. Then go to the Smart Art Tab, go to the Reset section of this tab (I can only guess it's called Reset, since I'm german..) and use the option to convert the whole Smart Art into shapes (again, I freely translated it from "Konvertieren" and "In Formen konvertieren") 

    It solved the problem for me, since now all the shapes are individual objects that I can move around and do whatever I want with.

    Hope this helps!

    And of course I hope that someone from the support team or whatever picks this up and finds a proper fix for this! 

    Cheers

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-08-14T03:22:59+00:00

    I pay a healthy subscription fee every year, so  I would naturally expect MS functions to work as they should. There seems to be no solution being offered by MS. Disappointed.

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-02-28T15:20:12+00:00

    Just use the smart art as a template, to quickly create your diagram (it really speeds up creating the forms, giving them an homgenous appereance, etc.). Then, just convert it to shapes (use the button on the smart art design tab), and continue working manually.

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