Grouping Shapes & Images

[Guest]

In previous versions of Word I have been able to insert an image and the add
shapes on top of the image and then group the image and shapes together into
one object. So far, I have not been able to replicate this in the Word 2007
beta release as I cannot seem to select the image and the shapes at the same
time. Can anyone confirm this discrepancy or otherwise tell me what I should
be doing?

 

[Patrick Schmid]

This discrepancy exists. I don't know though if Microsoft will or even
can fix this. I am asking about this in the private beta newsgroups and
will get back to you.
The reason for why this is currently not working is in my guess that
Word doesn't implement fully the new Office drawing engine. Office 2007
has a completely new drawing engine that is used for charts, images,
shapes etc. PPT and Excel implement it fully, whereas Word doesn't. The
Word team decided to spend some resources on other things rather than
fully implementing it in this version. It was a tough call for them, but
they had to make it.
You can tell that there is a difference if you right-click the image.
Word offers you a Format Picture option that brings up a dialog which
has a list of tabs on the left and only a close button. This is a
non-modal dialog, meaning you can leave it open and still work on your
document. This dialog is part of the new Office drawing engine.
If you right-click the shape and select Format AutoShape, you see a
completely different dialog, namely the one you are used to from Office
2003. This dialog is part of the old Office drawing engine.
If you do the same thing in PPT, you will see in both cases the new
non-modal dialog.
My guess is that because the image and shape are handled by two
completely different drawing engines, you can't group them.

Patrick Schmid

 

[Guest]

Thanks for your very informative response. I look forward to further
developments.