Page 566 - Excel 2013 All-in-One For Dummies

548 Graphic Objects 101
✦ Click the Arrange button on the Format tab on the SmartArt Tools con- textual tab followed by the Align button and then choose the Snap to Grid option from its drop-down menu when the graphic object is a piece of SmartArt.
After the Snap to Grid feature is turned on, whenever you position an object very close to an invisible horizontal or vertical gridline, it snaps to this line as soon as you release the mouse button.
You can “nudge” a selected graphic object into its desired position by press- ing the arrow keys. When you press an arrow key, Excel moves the object just a very little bit in that direction. Nudging is very useful when you have an object that’s almost in place and requires very little handling to get it into just the right position.
If you no longer need a graphic object, you can get rid of it by clicking it to select the object and then pressing the Delete key to remove it.
Moving graphic objects to new layers
All graphic objects that you add to a worksheet lay on different invisible layers that reside on top of the worksheet and over the worksheet data in the cells below. This means that if you move a graphic object over a cell that contains an entry, the graphic hides the data beneath it. Likewise, if you draw a shape or add an image and then position it on top of another graphic object (such as an embedded chart or other shape or picture), it also covers up the graphic below.
Figure 2-2 illustrates this situation. In this figure, you see a triangle shape partially covering a star that I’ve drawn on top of a right-arrow shape, all on top of a clustered column chart created from a nearby table of worksheet data. The three graphic shapes, the triangle, star, and arrow, are identified in the Selection task pane displayed on the right side of the program window as Isosceles Triangle 4, 5-Point Star 3, and Right Arrow 2, respectively.
You display the Selection task pane by clicking the Selection Pane command button on the Format tab on the Chart Tools, Drawing Tools, or Picture Tools contextual tab, depending on the type of graphic object selected. When a SmartArt graphic object is selected, you need to click the Arrange command button before you can click the Selection Pane button on the Format tab of the SmartArt Tools contextual tab.