Office XP WORD 2002--Connector under Autoshapes Drawing Tool

[J Gahn]

I'm able to use all autoshapes except connectors. For
some reason, they are not active--I can see the icons,
but they are the faint color indicating they are not
available, and nothing happens when I try to click on
them.

How can I activate the connectors or otherwise connect
boxes in a flow chart?

Thanks!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

In Word 2002 you must activate the drawing canvas in order to use
connectors. There are two ways to do this:

1. Check the appropriate option on the General tab of Tools | Options. This
is a general setting and may well drive you crazy because you'll get a
drawing canvas every time you try to draw.

2. Use Insert | Picture | New Drawing, which will create a one-time canvas.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[J Gahn]

Thanks, I was able to activate the connectors using
option 2 below.

Please explain the purpose of/how to use the drawing
canvas. I've been struggling with them while inserting
text boxes & now while trying to insert the connectors.
I have a nice text box or nice connector with the dots
that outline the text box or connector & allow me to
manipulate its dimensions, but I don't undertand how the
canvas is supposed to work with the actual text
box/connector. I've got 5 text boxes on one page & the
canvases are confusing me & I'm afraid they're going to
move my text boxes if I don't understand how they work
together.

thanks.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You create all the text boxes and the connectors as part of the same canvas.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

Hi J.,

For Word 6 through Word 2000 MS provided an add-in, MS Draw that provided you a drawing workspace (container) for creating, for
example, an org chart. All of your shapes would be placed in the Workspace and the Workspace became a single graphical entity
within your document. You edited the contents of the workspace by double clicking it.

Starting with Word2002 MS replaced the MS Draw Add-in with a built in Office workspace, the MS Drawing Canvas (one of Bill Gates
'vision' things is to use a blank 'canvas' as the metaphor for workspaces, desktops, etc for the way Windows might look in the
future). The canvas is functionally pretty much the same as the Draw add-in with the exceptions of being able to resize/rescale
semi-automatically and to work better in creating graphics when you use File=>Save as Web Page, from within Word.

With either the Drawing Canvas or the MSDraw Workspace Word still limits a graphic to one 'printed page size' object (i.e. they
can't overlap a page boundary). Elements/shapes that are created outside of a workspace can be dragged or pasted into the workspace
and items in the workspace can likewise be moved outside of the workspace into the regular working area of the document. A drawing
canvas/workspace can have 'wrap style' layout attributes applied to the whole workspace just as a textbox or grouped shapes/graphics
could and Word will generally treat the workspace object no better but no worse than a separate textbox. But, if you have multiple
shapes in a workspace, you only have to 'worry' about placement of the single object, rather than all of the individual elements.

=======
Thanks, I was able to activate the connectors using
option 2 below.

Please explain the purpose of/how to use the drawing
canvas. I've been struggling with them while inserting
text boxes & now while trying to insert the connectors.
I have a nice text box or nice connector with the dots
that outline the text box or connector & allow me to
manipulate its dimensions, but I don't undertand how the
canvas is supposed to work with the actual text
box/connector. I've got 5 text boxes on one page & the
canvases are confusing me & I'm afraid they're going to
move my text boxes if I don't understand how they work
together.

thanks. >>
--
I hope this helps you,

Bob Buckland ?
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

The Office 2003 System parts explained
http://microsoft.com/uk/office/editions.asp