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About this lesson
Use the Publisher layout guides and rulers to control the placement of your shapes.
Lesson versions
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2016, 2019/365.
Exercise files
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Shapes - Control Placement.pub106 KB Shapes - Control Placement - Solution.pub
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Quick reference
Shapes - Control Placement
Move shapes into their exact positions by using Layout Guides, Zoom Control, Rulers and Nudge.
When to use
Layout guides are useful in any publication.
Zoom Control works in all Microsoft programs.
Rulers can be repositioned.
Nudge (with the arrow keys on your keyboard) are masterful in gently moving a shape.
Instructions
Helpful Hints to Align Shapes.
- Turn on Layout Guides.
a. Click the View Ribbon.
- Click the Page Design ribbon, Guides.
- Choose a ruler guide: As shapes align to the guide, that line will brighten.
- Use Nudge (the arrow keys.)
- Zoom in (Ctrl + mouse wheel) or use bottom right of screen.
- Collapse ribbons for more viewing area (double click any ribbon tab.)
Before:
After:
- Move the Rulers into your work area and add more Guidelines as necessary.
- Use a Straight Edge line to help align shapes if necessary.
- 00:04 All right, this lesson is a geometric exercise.
- 00:07 As you can see on the left hand panel, I've got a picture of a butterfly.
- 00:11 And then all the pieces for that butterfly that you are going to get to put together,
- 00:15 just download this project file from the course and start working on it.
- 00:19 This is a fun exercise because what you're going to learn is how to use
- 00:22 all the tools that I've listed here on the left to put those pieces together.
- 00:26 So our first step is to put some guides on the screen so
- 00:29 we can actually see where the guides are located.
- 00:31 So on the View ribbon we're going to click guides.
- 00:34 And as you can see, this blue line showed up, that is my margin guide.
- 00:37 I can keep it or leave it.
- 00:39 Right now I'm not really working with text,
- 00:41 I'm going to get rid of that margin guide.
- 00:43 How about boundaries, let's put the boundaries on there.
- 00:45 Well, that just put boxes around all my text boxes,
- 00:49 not so much on the actual shapes.
- 00:52 So I think I'm going to get rid of the boundaries as well but
- 00:54 you need to know they are there.
- 00:55 What I am going to use is the page design.
- 00:58 When I click on page design we have an entire option that says guides.
- 01:01 And now I can scroll down and choose any one of these guides.
- 01:04 And I am going to go ahead and choose this one right here.
- 01:07 And you're going to see a grid splashed on the back of my page.
- 01:10 Now this grid will not print but it will absolutely help you align things.
- 01:14 So watch, I'm going to smoothly move this box over to the right.
- 01:18 And I wish you could feel my mouse as I'm moving it because it
- 01:21 is pausing right there and then I put push through it.
- 01:24 So when it hits a guide, it does temporarily stop just for
- 01:27 a moment, just to kind of give you that option to let go.
- 01:30 But then you can push through it.
- 01:32 So that's going to happen as we start moving these pieces and
- 01:35 parts into the shape of the butterfly.
- 01:37 All right another thing that's fun to use is a straight edge.
- 01:40 Literally a straight edge.
- 01:41 And on your example you can click and drag this over.
- 01:44 A straight edge is simply a straight line.
- 01:46 I got that by hitting insert > shapes.
- 01:48 I chose a line and I came out here and I drew the line.
- 01:52 And if you click and drag with your shift key you'll draw an exactly straight line.
- 01:57 Then, of course, I just colored it red to create a straight edge.
- 01:59 When I am done with it, I delete it and get rid of it, but it's a great assist.
- 02:03 I'm going to set that up above to grab that when I need to align something
- 02:07 exactly straight.
- 02:09 All right, use the cursor arrows to nudge.
- 02:11 Now, that means we're going to click and drag one of these butterfly wings.
- 02:15 We're going to click and drag it right up here.
- 02:17 And now I'm going to grab this spinning rotate right over here.
- 02:20 But maybe I want it to nudge and land on the edge of this guide right here.
- 02:25 Well, clicking and dragging might take it too far.
- 02:27 So, I'm just going to tap my cursor key and it will slowly,
- 02:32 pixel by pixel, nudge it into place.
- 02:35 Now, your shift-arrow key, shift-arrow key, it'll jump faster, so
- 02:38 it doesn't take as long to get over there.
- 02:41 So I'm holding down my shift with my arrow keys, but
- 02:43 just my simple arrow keys it will slowly get it's way over there.
- 02:46 All right, the zoom control.
- 02:48 That means hold down your control key and wheel up on your mouse, so that way you
- 02:52 can really zoom in and get exactly nudged into place exactly the way you want it.
- 02:58 And then zoom wheel down to zoom back out.
- 03:01 So you've gotta be able to zoom in and see these things.
- 03:04 Collapse ribbons for more viewing area.
- 03:06 On any of the ribbons up on top I can just double-click a ribbon tab,
- 03:10 click click, and collapse it.
- 03:11 It just gives me more room to see my project.
- 03:15 And then move the rulers closer to the work area.
- 03:17 Maybe I want this wing, this top left wing to be aligned exactly at the one inch.
- 03:22 Well my eyes looking at the one inch, it's quite a distance away and if I click and
- 03:26 drag it's not going to work.
- 03:28 So I'm just going to, over here, see this top left corner, these rulers?
- 03:31 Watch this, it even says drag to move ruler origin.
- 03:34 Click and drag and I can move my rulers exactly where I want them.
- 03:38 And I want this wing lined up at that one inch so I can click and drag.
- 03:41 Now you can see that little one inch marker.
- 03:43 There's a guideline within the ruler.
- 03:46 So I can click and drag and land exactly on the one inch and
- 03:49 maybe nudge it over a little more.
- 03:50 So that's why we move our rulers.
- 03:52 When you're done, you simply move them back.
- 03:54 There's one other thing about the guides I want to show you.
- 03:57 So I'm going to go back to my page design and I'm going to turn off my guide.
- 04:00 So I'm going to choose this one right here, no ruler guides.
- 04:03 And there's another little trick on the ruler.
- 04:05 The actual bottom of the ruler, there's this gray line, and
- 04:07 when I float my mouse it says create horizontal guide.
- 04:10 I can literally click and
- 04:11 drag one single guideline down into my page, same on the left.
- 04:16 I'm not moving the ruler at all.
- 04:18 I'm simply dragging a guideline so now I can click and drag and
- 04:21 nudge right into that guideline.
- 04:23 Kind of a great feature.
- 04:25 All right, the challenge I'm giving you right now is to take all those pieces and
- 04:30 parts of the butterfly and put it together.
- 04:32 Have fun with that.
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