If you use the shapes on the drawing toolbar such as the rectangle, oval, and arrow, you will discover that the shapes do not stay connected when you move them. Rather than using the arrow, Episode 504 shows you how to connect the shapes using a connector that will always stay attached to the shapes.
This blog is the video podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 277 tips from the book!
This blog is the video podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 277 tips from the book!
Transcript of the video:
Hey, welcome back to the MrExel netcast. I'm Bill Jelen.
Today's question came from Terry and it involves using drawing shapes.
Now in excel 2003 you have to use View Toolbars Drawing and usually the Drawing toolbar appears at the bottom of your screen.
I moved it up to the top here just to quickly demonstrate what we're talking about.
Let's say that you have a couple of shapes that you use from the drawing toolbar and you draw an arrow to go from one shape to the other.
So we'll draw an arrow from the rectangle to the circle and everything's fine until you rearrange something on the worksheet.
Let's say you move the circle or something like that and now the arrow is pointing off into the middle of nowhere.
There's a great solution for this rather than using the arrow on right on the drawing toolbar, we would need to go kind of deeper into AutoShapes and go to the Connectors tab. The Connectors tab has a whole series of connectors.
Let me choose one of these and then you hover over the first shape and you'll see four little blue connection points. So I can choose any of those connection points and then draw down to my other shape again when we hover, we'll see in this case, there's eight different connection points.
Let me choose one of those and excel will draw in a connector.
The great thing about the connector is that as I move the shape, the line automatically moves with it.
Much much better than the arrow, that's on the drawing toolbar. Now let's switch over to excel 2007.
We're in Excel 2007. They've really improved this dramatically.
I have two shapes here and if I just go to insert shapes and use any line or any arrow, every line or arrow is automatically eligible to be a connector.
When we hover over the first shape you'll see that we have four attachment handles.
Choose any of those attachment handles go to the second shape hover and in this case there's eight attachment handles, so I can choose any one of those that I want and again as I move the line automatically moves with it so in excel 2003 specifically you have to go into the AutoShapes and choose one of the connectors in excel 2007 any line is eligible to be a connector.
Make sure to use that and then as you drag shapes around the worksheet they'll automatically stay connected.
Great question.Thanks to Terry for sending it in. If you have a question to send in, drop us an email bill@MrExcel.com and we'll get to you on a future podcast.
Thanks for stopping by. Will see you tomorrow for another netcast from MrExcel.
Today's question came from Terry and it involves using drawing shapes.
Now in excel 2003 you have to use View Toolbars Drawing and usually the Drawing toolbar appears at the bottom of your screen.
I moved it up to the top here just to quickly demonstrate what we're talking about.
Let's say that you have a couple of shapes that you use from the drawing toolbar and you draw an arrow to go from one shape to the other.
So we'll draw an arrow from the rectangle to the circle and everything's fine until you rearrange something on the worksheet.
Let's say you move the circle or something like that and now the arrow is pointing off into the middle of nowhere.
There's a great solution for this rather than using the arrow on right on the drawing toolbar, we would need to go kind of deeper into AutoShapes and go to the Connectors tab. The Connectors tab has a whole series of connectors.
Let me choose one of these and then you hover over the first shape and you'll see four little blue connection points. So I can choose any of those connection points and then draw down to my other shape again when we hover, we'll see in this case, there's eight different connection points.
Let me choose one of those and excel will draw in a connector.
The great thing about the connector is that as I move the shape, the line automatically moves with it.
Much much better than the arrow, that's on the drawing toolbar. Now let's switch over to excel 2007.
We're in Excel 2007. They've really improved this dramatically.
I have two shapes here and if I just go to insert shapes and use any line or any arrow, every line or arrow is automatically eligible to be a connector.
When we hover over the first shape you'll see that we have four attachment handles.
Choose any of those attachment handles go to the second shape hover and in this case there's eight attachment handles, so I can choose any one of those that I want and again as I move the line automatically moves with it so in excel 2003 specifically you have to go into the AutoShapes and choose one of the connectors in excel 2007 any line is eligible to be a connector.
Make sure to use that and then as you drag shapes around the worksheet they'll automatically stay connected.
Great question.Thanks to Terry for sending it in. If you have a question to send in, drop us an email bill@MrExcel.com and we'll get to you on a future podcast.
Thanks for stopping by. Will see you tomorrow for another netcast from MrExcel.
