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Technology Tip of the Week - May 18, 2006
Aligning Drawing Objects
In this last installment on drawing in Microsoft Office programs we will look at some easy ways to align objects, group several objects together into a composite object, and rotate or flip objects. These features apply to objects you've drawn in your Word document or on your PowerPoint slide, but they also can be used with other types of objects like clip art, text boxes, or photos.
When you add more than one object to a page it is often a challenge to get the objects to line up perfectly. The Align command, located under the Draw button on the Drawing toolbar, aligns objects relative to one another. You can align objects so that they are lined up with one another or spaced equally apart from one another. This tip will give you the easy steps to aligning objects perfectly.
This tip also explains how to group and ungroup objects. It’s often easier to move and work with a single object than it is to work with several smaller objects. A group is a collection of objects that is treated as though it were a single object. By grouping several objects together you can move or resize the entire group instead of moving and resizing each object one by one. Note that once you know how to do this in one program, it works the same in all the other Microsoft Office programs.
Aligning Objects
Select multiple objects you wish to
align:
Press and hold down the <Shift>
key as you click each object that you want to select or use the
arrow pointer (
) to draw a
box around the objects that you want to select.
Align objects with each other:
click the 
Draw
button
on the Drawing toolbar, select Align or Distribute
and select how you want to align or distribute the selected objects.
Grouping Objects
Select the objects you want to group together by pressing and holding down the <Shift> key as you click each object
Click the Draw
button on the Drawing toolbar
and select Group.
To ungroup: Select the grouped object, click the
Flipping and Rotating Objects
To Rotate an Object by 90 Degrees: Select the object, click the
To Flip an Object: Select the object, click the Draw button on the Drawing toolbar and Rotate or Flip and select Flip Horizontal or Flip Vertical.
To Free Rotate an Object: Select the object, click the
Free Rotate button on the Drawing toolbar, and click and drag any of the objects rotate handles (·) with the
pointer. You can also rotate an object by selecting the object, selecting Format - AutoShape from the menu, clicking the Size tab and entering the amount in degrees you want to rotate the object in the Rotation box.
Draw a few shapes using instructions from our last two tips and try this out.
For more help with this feature, please contact one of the IT Instructional Support team (Norm Grant, Gene Grande or Linda Beith).
Website of the Week
Grade-a-Matic: The Red Pen Goes High Tech by Cheri Lucas
Imagine this: your student goes to your website and types in his or her paper on the assigned topic. They click "Submit" and within minutes their essay is scored and the grade is displayed along with feedback, including things like success at identifying concepts or appropriateness of examples - all controlled by a piece of software. For more information see the full article at:
http://www.edutopia.org/magazine/ed1article.php?id=Art_1411&issue=dec_05
Feel free to post your thoughts or opinions of this site in the Teaching Forum message board.
These tips are provided by the Department of Information Technology
instructional support team. If you
have any questions on these tips, or wish to offer your own, please feel free to
contact Linda Beith at lbeith@ccri.edu. View an archive of past technology tips
at
http://it.ccri.edu/Training/Tips/tip_week.shtml.
