Unable to turn off object snapping

[stjst]

Hi,

I recently was forced to move to Powerpoint 2007 by our IT department, and
like many former Powerpoint "experts" I am now feeling lost and powerless


One thing that especially annoys me about 2007 is that when I draw a line,
the ends of the line want to snap to a set of handles that suddenly appear
on existing on-slide objects as the end of the line come near to those
objects. (I hope that explanation is clear!).

This makes alignment almost impossible - I almost always work with "snap to
grid" switched on by the way. Suddenly all my lines are skewed off the
vertical or horizontal.

I looked in the Arrange, align options and the box "snap objects to other
objects" is NOT checked. So why are these snap handles appearing, and is
there any way to switch them off?

- Windows XP SP2
- Powerpoint 2007 SP1
- Driver for HP 5550 printer installed

 

[John Wilson]

Does holding down the ALT key help?
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[stjst]

Aha! It did work!

But it also seems to turn off the snap to grid

However, inspired by your suggestion I tried pressing:

- Ctrl (which didn't seem to do anything different)
- Shift - which looks like it constrains the line to 45 degree angles -
including, of course, straight down and straight across.

Now I've "rediscovered" this feature (I use it all the time for rotate, but
for some reason never associated it with drawing) it completely solves my
problem.

Thanks John!

Cheers,
Geoff

 

[IRD]

I have been having the same trouble but with one additional headache. I
cannot get any lines or arrows to be perfectly horizontal or vertical.
Whether grid or object snap is on or off, and whatever additional keys I use
(Shift, Alt, Ctrl) the lines will snap themselves slightly off the horizontal
or vertical angle. When I use Alt it simply turns snaps on if it was off and
off if it was on. Ctrl alone rotates the line about its centerline, Shift
makes the line get infinitely long in one direction and Ctrl Shift makes the
line infinitely long in both directions. The slides all look terrible with
all lines off the horizontal. Any ideas?