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
    2016-02-28T15:20:12+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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  2. Anonymous
    2015-12-22T18:37:37+00:00

    Thank goodness for the "WayBackMachine".  When you encounter a broken link, go to the WayBackMachine site (web.archive.org), paste the link into the search window and with a little luck they have a copy of the article.  This is not always true (especially with MS), but this time it worked.

    https://web.archive.org/web/20130825041159/http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/resize-a-smartart-graphic-shape-or-an-entire-smartart-graphic-HA001205872.aspx

    <Obvious> HINT

    Make browser Bookmark / Favorite or even Desktop shortcut to web.archive.org

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-12-22T16:57:42+00:00

    This link is broken. Do we have any up to date information on this?

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  4. Suzanne S Barnhill 279.4K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2015-11-30T22:43:43+00:00

    This sounds like a tip for PowerPoint rather than Word.

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