Cannot do free rotaion for only a few degrees

[nipohc]

I am using Word 2003 with Windows XP, SP3. I would like to rotate a
scanned-in engineering drawing from someone else, which was inserted as a
picture to my Word document, just a couple of degrees so I can line up the
lines to the grid to facilitate additional drawings. I was able to get free
roatation working. But, the rotation alway jumped to about 15 degree with
small angles, no matter how little I dragged the handle. Above that it is
continuous, but not useful for me.

Appreciate any suggestions for fixing the bug. I seem to remember being
able to do this in earlier OS or earlier versions of Word.

Thanks,

 

[Jay Freedman]

I am using Word 2003 with Windows XP, SP3. I would like to rotate a
scanned-in engineering drawing from someone else, which was inserted as a
picture to my Word document, just a couple of degrees so I can line up the
lines to the grid to facilitate additional drawings. I was able to get free
roatation working. But, the rotation alway jumped to about 15 degree with
small angles, no matter how little I dragged the handle. Above that it is
continuous, but not useful for me.

Appreciate any suggestions for fixing the bug. I seem to remember being
able to do this in earlier OS or earlier versions of Word.

Thanks,

Word is not a good tool for this.

Download the free graphics program IrfanView from www.irfanview.com. It has a
rotation dialog where you can type in the number of degrees of rotation and
preview the result. When you get what you want, save it to a file and then
insert that file into Word.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You can override this by pressing Alt while rotating, or you can set the
exact angle of rotation on the Size tab of the Format Picture dialog

 

[nipohc]

Irfanview allowed me to execute exactly what I needed, which was rotating for
just a fraction of a degree, actually. (I had over-estimated the degree of
ratation required to align old and new objects in the original post.)

Rotation in Word has a much coarser resolution of 1 degree, hence unable to
fill my needs. Your assessment of Word's capability was right on.

I used MS Photo Editor (with earlier OS's) which was a no-frill
photo/graphics editing program that would probably have done this, too. Do
you know what MS did to it?

Thank you , Jay!

 

[nipohc]

Hi Susan,

Pressing the Alt key while rotating did not achieve the desire result. But,
setting the rotation in the Format Pcture diaglog made me realize the
resolution for rotation in Word is 1 degree. I actually needed a rotation of
only a fraction of a degree. (Eye ball calibration was way off in original
post.)

I followed Jay's suggestion in the previous post and downloaded IrfanView.
It has a much finer resolution and did the job quite sucessfully.

Thanks for helping me calibrate.

nipohc

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You can (re)install Photo Editor if you still have a version of Office that
includes it, but it doesn't come with Office any more (Office XP was the
last version to include it, I think). Note that if you do install it, Office
Update will keep prompting you for updates to every Office XP application
even though all you have installed is Photo Editor.