Quantum Leap :: View topic

Nancy Stacy

Here'a another quick one:

I usually include multiple images of the item, and magnified images of trademarks, etc. I would often get them all arranged the way I want them, only to have them re-arrange themselves when I wasn't looking.

Quick fix:
In Word, once all the images are where you want them, HOLD DOWN the "Control" key and click on each image in turn.
When they are all highlighted, hold down the "Alt" key and hit "R" and then "G". (Shortcut for clicking on "Draw" and choosing "Group".)

If the text runs across your images, click on the group of images, right-click to open the drop-down box, and choose "format object". I made a macro for this routine, so now I can do it in one stroke.

Hope this helps someone.

Choose the "Layout" tab, and click on the "Square" button. There may be other options you want to add on that page and under the "Advanced" tab, but just try out "Square" first, and see if it does the job. You can go back and experiment with some of the other formatting choices.

Nancy Stacy

The second-to-last paragraph in the message above. . . "Hope this helps someone" should be the last line. The last paragraph is a continuation of instructions for formatting text around pictures or objects.

Thom · Site Admin

Thanks Nancy,

This one could be especially useful to me. I recently had to reformat the hard drive of my lab computer and, of course, reinstall everything. As you might expect Word now has all new quirks that it didn't have previously (go figure). Your picture suggestion will help conquer one of those quirks.

Some day I hope we can control the picture layout from within PAS but in the moment Word doesnt give us enough control.

Regards - Thom

GAN

Very well done Nancy,

Geoff

MichaelI

Further to Nancy's solution to wandering images how about this?

PAS places images to the right by default, does this annoy you as much as it did me? The answere is to place a table box in your ITEM component and then position the table where you need it. The available position settings are left, right and centre. OK I know this doesn't seem like many options but in practice it means that images can be placed on the left hand margin and locked to text. It gives another layout option for those wanting a stylish presentation.
PS
Why not place your final market statement and the value in a table as well. This also give extra positional control.
PPS
I have returned to placing images on the right. I still use the table method because this tightens up the layout, but at least I know I can place them on the left any time I like Very Happy

all the best,

Michael Inkpen

MichaelI

Further to my last about images and tables I should of course have said that placing the image field inside a table and then positioning the table is the way to go. you may have to play about with the size of the table box to get it to work.

Too big and the benifits are lost, too small and the table will "burst" and end up in the wrong place. Just play around until you get it right.

all the best,

Michael Inkpen

Thom · Site Admin

Once again thank you Michael for another Word tip.

Regards - Thom

Nancy Stacy

Michael,
Your mention of tables reminds me that it is also possible to place a table into your component layout where you can insert fieds, for example, with the basic gemstone information all in a nice, controlled row with columns of the appropriate width. You can program the table to "wrap text", in case the text gets longer than expected. You can also format the table to show lines around the cells, or not--just looking neat and tidy.
It saves quite a bit of space over having all the info in one long column

Which reminds me of a trick I learned from Adrian: I now format my item header (where you number and summarize the item) to have a border around the "paragraph" and I lightly shade the field. It makes it really easy to see where one item ends and the next one begins in case you have more than one item on a page.