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
    2011-04-12T11:06:57+00:00

    If you need to use connectors they only work if you put the objects on a canvas, which is annoying as you then cannot align your objects.

    My answer is to create the flowchart, drawing , etc in Powerpoint.

    Alignment and connectors will now work without any canvas.

    (if you are selecting multiple objects make sure you don't select the connectors or they will convert to ordinary lines)

    Then just copy the finished object to your word doc ( maybe group it first?)

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  2. Anonymous
    2011-03-15T10:51:13+00:00

    That worked!!!

    I hope this bug will be fixed soon...

    Thanks Spyros!

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  3. Anonymous
    2011-03-15T10:09:35+00:00

    Hello people,

    I think I have found a nice workarround to this problem (At least it works for me). When you create a new document make sure you save it as "Word 97-2003 Document (*.doc)". When you do that and then you create a Drawing Canvas, select the object you want to align or distribute, go to Arrange, Align and make sure that Align Selected Objects is selected. Now the alignment tools will work for the selected objects.

    I don't know if this problem has been resolved. Am a PhD student and I started writting my thesis and I came accross to this problem. But this worked really good for me. Please let me know if this problem has been resolved in any other way!

    Spyros Efthymiou

    University of Manchester

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  4. Anonymous
    2011-03-02T22:20:10+00:00

    All we can do is express our collective need for a fix for this obvious design error.

    Count me in.

    I was simply trying to do a "simple" Word drawing within an existing drawing, but now it seems I "should" have just done a Visio drawing instead.

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