This week's post begins another occasional series, this one in which we'll share with you 2-5 very brief tips for working in Publisher.  The series is taken from tips written by one of our senior testers, John Dimmick, and is used to help new hires and interns on our team become more familiar with the product.

Here are some little known keyboard modifiers for manipulating shapes in Publisher 2007:

• To rotate a shape in 15 degree increments hold down the SHIFT key while you are rotating the free rotate handle (that little green thingy attached to the shape when it’s selected)
• To rotate a shape around the bottom middle handle hold down the CTRL key while you are rotating the free rotate handle
• To make a perfect circle or square hold down the SHIFT key when you drag out the shape when you first create it (using the oval or rectangle tool) or when you drag one of the corner handles
• To resize a shape around its current middle hold down the CTRL key when you drag any one of the resize handles

John Dimmick

Software Design Engineer in Test II

About the contributor:  John Dimmick is a Software Design Engineer in Test and has worked for Microsoft for 12.5 years, 10.5 years on the Publisher test team. In his spare time he likes using Mail Merge and making perfect circles.