Rutledge

Drawing Toolbar

Turn on the Drawing Toolbar

Right-click in any gray area of a toolbar, and left-click the Drawing Toolbar to get a checkmark next to it. Or you can click the menu View and Toolbars.

Draw a line

Click the line button Point to a place on your page and click and drag to place the line. ______________  To make changes to the line, it must be selected. You select a line by clicking on it. Notice the handles that indicate it is selected. clicking on one handle and dragging can stretch the line or change its direction. If you do not like the result and would like to start over, select the line and click the delete key. 

You can change the thickness of the line by clicking the line weight button.  or you can make the line dotted .

Clicking the arrow next to the line color button  lets you change the color to almost any you can imagine

Arrows

Arrows work similar to lines. Create the arrow with this button.  Change its style with the arrow style button       All the buttons that work for lines, also apply to arrows (or rays.) 

Shapes

Word has two common shapes easily accessible on the toolbar   

Click the Rectangle button and drag to form a rectangle. To form a square, click the rectangle button and then hold the shift key while dragging the figure on your page.

To change size, click on one of the corner handles and drag toward the center.

Dragging from a side handle will stretch or shrink, but the shape will change (very important to note with clipart.)

With your shape selected, click the fill color button      and your shape will turn

yellow. To choose a different color, use the down arrow to the right of the can. You can also select the color for the outline of your shape by using the line color button .

      Click the down arrow to find the many other shapes available.

 Text Box

The text box can be extremely useful for putting notes on a page like a sticky note, or labeling figures in math or maps in history. It is inserted similar to a shape. Click on the text box button.       The outside border can be made invisible by selecting the textbox and selecting no line from the line button 

A shape can be turned into a textbox by clicking the shape on the page, clicking the textbox button and clicking the shape again. You will see the insertion point blinking inside the shape for you to type.

 Have fun on your own playing with the following buttons:

shadow            3-D                  Word Art         Clip Art            Font Color

The Draw button  Clicking the Draw button will produce this menu. The following items can be helpful: Order, Align or Distribute, Group. Order If you have more than one shape in a drawing, it may be important to have one of them in front. Click the shape and select Order and the item that applies. See Transparent Shapes at the bottom of this page.

Align or Distribute

If you have several items that you want to line up, select them all by holding the shift key while you click on them to select all of them. Then click Draw, Align or Distribute. In the 2 examples below, I selected Align Top

Remember that you can always access a context sensitive menu by right-clicking an item.

When I clicked the rectangle above and selected Format AutoShapes, I got this dialogue box.

You may want to experiment with the Layout button.  

Transparent Shapes

If you have overlapping shapes that you want to be transparent, double-click one and choose Semitransparent.

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