Rotate and Flip an Object: MS Word

When an object does not appear to be going in the right direction in MS Word, you can flip or rotate it to your preference. When you want to pivot the object to that it is at a different angle, you can change its rotation. If you want a mirror image of the object, you can flip it.

To rotate follow the steps below:

1. Select the object so that sizing handles surround it.
    
2. Click the Free Rotate button on the Drawing toolbar. This changes the sizing handles to green circles and changes the mouse pointer as well.
    
3. Drag any of the green handles to pivot the object.
    
4. When you are finished, click away from the shape to return to the normal mouse pointer.

Other times you need to rotate an object exactly 90 degrees or flip it around completely so that it is facing the other direction. A menu choice does this for you. Click the Draw button on the Drawing toolbar and click Rotate or Flip to see the menu.

Rotation and flipping work only on drawing objects, not on picture or clip art. However, if the clip art image is a Windows Metafile (WMF), you can ungroup it (as will be explained in an upcoming article titled "Align, Stack and Group Objects") to change it into drawing objects. Then you can modify it in parts or as a whole.

When you want to apply the same effect to several objects, it's easiest to select the object first and then apply the formatting.

You can select objects in two ways:

• Click the Select Objects button on the Drawing toolbar and drag to surround all the objects with a dotted line. When you are finished selecting, click the Select Objects button again to restore the normal mouse pointer.
   
• Click the first object, hold down the Shift key, and select additional objects, if you want to eliminate an item you've selected while keeping the others, hold down the CTRL key and click the one you want to omit.

Practice what you've learned and see how expert you can become!

(c) Carol Bratt, all rights reserved. Used with permission. Duplication is forbidden without express consent of author. Visit Carol's web site to learn more tips like this one!