Cannot align objects in a drawing canvas

Anonymous
2010-07-08T15:31:05+00:00

I have several clipart objects in a drawing canvas and I want to align them with each other and within the canvas. The alignment options are all greyed out regardless of whether I have "align to page" or "align to canvas" selected.

This happens in Word 2010 on both Windows 7 and Windows Vista

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Anonymous
2010-09-02T09:38:03+00:00

Summarising:

1 - Inside the canvas you cannot align objects

2 - You have to move object outside the canvas in order to align them, BUT:

3 - Outside the canvas you cannot use connectors...

A bit frustrating for people who work every single day with word...

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  1. Anonymous
    2010-10-04T10:54:33+00:00

    I totally agree. A very big pain in the neck. The only suggestion I have is to prepare the document in Publisher, the alignment works there though some of the shape functionality isn't as good as in the Drawing Canvas (e.g. U-turn block arrows) and copy it across as I have been doing, though I do accept a lot of people will not have access to Publisher.

    Is this another attempt by Microsoft to get corporations to buy more products?

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  2. Anonymous
    2010-10-01T22:15:55+00:00

    First, I'd just like to add my vote and say this regression is a serious problem.  Interestingly at least one person noticed this bug during the Office 2010 beta

    http://www.techtalkz.com/ms-office-help/39289-aligning-objects-inside-canvas.html

    Secondly, I mistakenly marked the above comment as a potential solution to this problem. :-)    Finding a bug in the first 10 minutes of using my shiny new copy of Office 2010 + too much coffee made my mouse-ing hand a little twitchy.

    To Microsoft Office developers: Please please please, fix this bug.  And please don't wait for a service pack! 

    To err is human, to fix bugs in a timely matter is to have customers in the future.

    Unfortunately, my experience with reporting bugs to MS about Office is that at best they get acknowledged and rarely get fixed.

    Here's hoping I'm wrong.

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  3. Anonymous
    2010-09-16T13:18:11+00:00

    Here! Here! My sentiments exactly.

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  4. Anonymous
    2010-09-16T12:13:29+00:00

    It's not only alignment but distribution which is off the wall in Word 2010. Having followed this thread, I cut and pasted my objects out to the canvas and directly onto the page. Alignment works but when I try to distribute the objects they get spread out all over the page.

    I have been using Word's drawing functions on a daily basis for 15 years to produce all kinds of diagrams and stuff. I have watched the functionality improve with each release and have been singing its praises to everyone who would listen - and many who would not. 

    I have built my professional reputation partially on my ability to produce complex illustrations in this way. Now however I feel completely helpless, it is like someone randomly removing the 'e' key from the keypad. 

    I hope that someone is taking this problem seriously. In the age of Google docs and the like, Office 2010 is too expensive to justify this kind of bug.

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