Drawing tools are great aids in
sprucing up your document, worksheet or slide. You may have been
using it for quite sometime however there still are a few features
that you might be unaware of. Tick the ones you know.
Did you know...
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... that you can draw a
square/circle by holding down the Shift key while
drawing with the rectangle/ellipse tool respectively.
-
... that you can incline lines at
precise 15 degree increments if you hold the Shift key
down while drawing with the Line tool.
-
... that you can mirror a line
being drawn by keeping Ctrl pressed while drawing the
line.
-
... that you can draw a perfectly
straight line by keeping Shift pressed while drawing
the line.
-
... that you can draw
rectangles/ellipses with centers at the point of click by holding down
the Ctrl key
-
... that you can make the
rectangle/ellipse snap to the cells in Excel by holding down the Alt
key while drawing.
-
... that you can make precise
adjustments to the Shapes in PowerPoint/Word by holding down the Alt
key while drawing.
-
... that you can position a
Shape even more precisely by keeping Ctrl
pressed and using the keyboard instead of the mouse.
-
... that you can duplicate a
Shape by holding down Ctrl and dragging the
shape to a new location.
-
... that keeping Shift
pressed & dragging a Shape keeps the shape aligned across either
the horizontal axis or the vertical axis with the center of the Shape,
at it's initial position, as the point of origin.
-
...that the keys (Ctrl, Shift & Alt) can
be used in various combinations. For example: Keep Ctrl+Shift
pressed to obtain a circle which is centered at the point
of click or Shift+Alt pressed to get precisely
sized circle and so on.
-
... that double clicking a
drawing option will enable you to draw multiple shapes at a go. The
mouse cursor is restored to the default only when you press Esc
or another tool or unclick the same tool again.
-
... you don't need a separate
text box to write text on top of a Shape. Click on the Textbox tool
and then click on the Shape.
-
... that you can also assign a
cell reference to a Shape in Excel. Thus you can make
the text in a Shape dynamic.
-
... that you can use the Format
painter to copy format from one Shape to the other quickly.
-
... that if you prefer a
particular formatting (color, fill, semi-transparent, border etc) for
the Shapes, you can make it the default. Right click on the Shape,
selecting Format Shape. On the Colors
& Lines tab, check Default for new objects
and click on OK.
-
... that you can replace a Shape
with another. Select the Shape, Click on the Draw menu,
click Change AutoShape and select the shape you want
to replace it with.