Connection lines and grouping shapes

Question

Level 2

165 points

Connection lines and grouping shapes

If you have shapes connected with a line why can't be grouped!

Is there a setting to enable this?

Just spent hours pulling my hair out only to discover that if I delete the connection lines and then group and re-size I can actually group everything but if I leave the lines in then any shape that is connected can not be grouped....sees odd.

mbp 17", Mac OS X (10.6.6)

Posted on Mar 8, 2011 7:28 PM

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Answer 1

Mar 9, 2011 5:39 AM in response to JinKL

Jin,

I can't answer why the designers weren't able to allow grouping of objects with connecting lines, but I can offer a workaround.

The workflow goes like this:

Select all the content that you wish to resize, including the connecting lines.

Command-C

Switch to Preview.app

Command-N

Command-C

Switch to Keynote.app

Command-V

Resize and adjust position.

This resized version of your work is not editable, except to move, resize, delete, etc., so keep a copy of the original in another iWork document in case you want to edit the content.

Jerry

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Answer 2

Mar 23, 2011 6:34 AM in response to Jerrold Green1

This is unreal! I was trying to resize a grouping of simple objects and hit some sort of limit as to how small it would go. Would resize larger but not smaller than some seemingly arbitrary size. Did the Preview cut and paste thing and now the grouping will go smaller in Keynote and Pages. Does anyone know what this size limit thing is and how to avoid it?

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Answer 3

Mar 23, 2011 8:33 AM in response to RockytopEngr

RE,

This sounds like a new topic to me. It would be a good idea to go back to the Topic List and click on "Post a New Topic" in the upper left corner of the page, just under the work "Forum".

Jerry

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Answer 4

tom_mez

Level 1

9 points

Nov 12, 2011 12:20 AM in response to JinKL

It's really bad that it's not possible to group shapes with connection lines. I can't imagine why this was made this way... there is no reason why for me...

I'm going to submit it as a wish to apple.

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Answer 5

Nov 6, 2012 8:01 AM in response to JinKL

I have just encountered this problem for the first time and for someone who works in the development world as an Urban Planner, I am constantly taking images of Site Plans or more complicated drawings and marking them up in some program like Pages or Word or Publisher... and being able to identify various components of a plan and then group and apply to other images is very key. Has anyone heard if there is a Pages update now (since it has been about a year since the last post)?

Thanks for any input.... I find this program is one of the least user friendly of all MAC programs. The masking feature as opposed to Words cropping feature is really difficult to use, instead of simply cropping the lines, I have to create a mask, then move my image within the mask and then readjust the lines to fit the scale of the image.... a lot more complicated than it really needs to be. I also prefer the ribbon in word as opposed to the inspector because the inspector always gets in my way.

Unfortunately when I use Word on my mac, it crashes quite often. So... basically doing my job with my macbook is problematic. I apologize for the rant.

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Answer 6

Nov 6, 2012 8:48 AM in response to Christine417

Christine

you need to post this in the correct forum, this is the Keynote discussion.

Pages Discussion

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Answer 7

Jul 17, 2013 9:17 AM in response to Jerrold Green1

Thank you Jerrold,

I had the same problem 2 years down the road and your shortcut worked fine for me.

How is it possible tha Aplle did such an un-apple thing?

Have they found a fix in the mean time?

thanks

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