Cannot align selected objects

Question

I have a new MacBook Pro (Apr11) with Office 2011 Version 14.1.3 (110805)

In Word, I am trying to aligh selected objects (like we used to be able to do in previous versions of Office for Mac 2008 on the pallette).  I follow the instructions in the Help section.  I select the two objects, I make sure that they are "in front of text" and I try to align them using the Align button.  My only options are "align to page" or or "align to margin."  The "align selected objects" is not available.  What gives?  Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Richard, I'm sorry this thread fell into oblivion. You posted on a Sunday and somehow the thread fell down in the sequence list and I never saw it again.

The way to post a picture is this: you upload it to a site and enable public access. I use SkyDrive, but you could use others as well, like Screencast. Once you post a picture there, you just drag it onto your post. This site does not allow pictures, only linking to them. For instance, I can include the Bing logo from a public place just by dragging it here:

Going back to your problem, the only way I could make the Align Selected Objects option become grayed out—and I tried various combinations of objects, like shapes, textboxes and pictures—was when only one object was selected. This also happened if objects were grouped (so that I got only one frame around them). So, your objects should not be grouped.

Else, somehow Word is not registering the selection of various objects and thinks only one is being selected. Perhaps grouping and ungrouping would fix that?

Answer 2

Thanks for your help.  I appreciate your time.

The Mac for Office 2011 doesn't have a page layout view, but a print layout view.  I could not see any docking lines in this view.  I was able to get the gridline shown on the document, but could not get the objects to snap to the gridline either, much less snap to them selves.

Since I cannot get the "Align Selected Objects" to ever unghost, unless I'm missing something, I'm thinking there may be a glitch in the program itself.

Answer 3

There is an old-looking  "DrawAlign" that produces this:

But except for "None" (which is somewhat redundant), you still have the others, including "Align Selected Objects" that the asker could not find. The missing step: select the Ribbon's Format tab, shown in purple after you select the objects:

Answer 4

Yeah, but what he wants is "DrawAlign", DrawDistributeHorizontally, and "DrawDistributeVertically".

These commands got left off the Ribbon.

You can create a toolbar (or use the Standard toolbar) then use Customise Toolbars and Menus to make those commands available to you.

They are the standard commands that have been used vigorously in Word drawing for years, they just left them off the User Interface for some weird reason...

Hope this helps

Answer 5

Try this:

• In the Ribbon, click on the Layout tab
• Then under Grid, click on Options
• Select Snap objects > To other objects

You'll see thin blue "docking" lines for alignment (you need to be in Page* Layout View for them to show).

* I meant "Publishing"