Ribbon

In This Topic

The ribbon contains a set of buttons, menus, combo boxes, and other command controls organized logically in groups and tab pages that allow you to manipulate the diagram, add, arrange, and style shapes, and access nearly all controls of MyDraw. Each tab at the top of the ribbon opens a different set of commands.

Each command in the ribbon has a tooltip that provides information about the command and its keyboard shortcut (if any). If you are unsure what a command does, move the mouse pointer over it and wait a second for the tooltip to appear.

Home Tab Page

The Home tab is the default page of the diagram ribbon.

The Home tab lists common commands for working with the document:

Clipboard: lets you cut or copy the currently selected shapes. If there are compatible objects in the clipboard, you can also use the paste button to insert them into your diagram.
Text - lets you control the font, size, and appearance of the text of the currently selected shape.
Paragraph - lets you specify paragraph settings of the text, such as horizontal and vertical alignment, line height, first-line indent, and paragraph mark visibility.
Shape Style - lets you control the fill, stroke, shadow, and corner rounding of the currently selected shape. For 1D shapes (i.e., connectors), you can also specify the begin and end arrowhead styles.
Tools - contains a set of tools that you can activate to create custom shapes, edit shape geometry, insert text, pan the diagram, or return to the default tool (the pointer tool), as shown in the image above.
Editing - contains text search commands that allow you to find and replace text in all shapes on the current page. It also includes commands for editing page layers and assigning shapes to layers.

Design Tab Page

The Design tab allows you to configure the theme of the active page and the style of individual shapes.

The Design tab consists of the following ribbon groups:

Page - lets you configure the orientation and size of the active page.
Shape Style - lets you quickly style a shape using a style from the currently selected page theme and variant.
Page Theme - lets you quickly change the appearance of all shapes on a page by changing the page theme.
Page Theme Variant - lets you apply a variant of the currently selected theme to the active page.

For more information about drawing themes and shape styles, see the Themes and Styles topic.

Action Tab Page

The Action tab lets you manipulate the currently selected shape or shapes.

The Action tab consists of the following ribbon groups:

Group - lets you group and ungroup shapes.
Rotate - lets you flip or rotate a shape.
Compose - lets you create a complex geometric shape by performing Composite Solid Geometry operations on a set of shapes (Union, Intersect, Subtract and Exclusive Or).

Arrange Tab Page

The Arrange tab lets you position, size, and align your shapes:

The Arrange tab consists of the following ribbon groups:

Align - lets you align two or more shapes.
Resize - lets you size one or more shapes relative to another shape.
Position - lets you position a shape within the page.
Z-order - lets you bring a shape in front of or send it behind other shapes.
Spacing - lets you configure the spacing between two or more shapes.
Grid - lets you align or size shapes to the grid.
Snap - lets you configure snapping behavior in MyDraw.
Layout - contains the Layout Shapes button, which opens a dialog for selecting, configuring, and applying an automatic layout to the selected shapes or the entire diagram.

Insert Tab Page

The Insert tab lets you insert objects into the document.

The Insert tab currently includes the following ribbon groups:

Illustrations - lets you insert images or 1D/2D barcodes into your diagram. After inserting a barcode, you can right-click it to modify its properties.
Symbols - lets you insert special characters and symbols into the text block of a shape.
Text - lets you insert hyperlinks and different text fields into the text block of a shape.

Review Tab Page

The Review tab lets you perform spell checking on the text in a drawing.

The Review tab currently includes the following buttons:

Spell Check - a toggle button that enables or disables spell checking for the entire document.
Symbols - lets you select the spell check dictionary to use. You can use one of the included dictionaries or load another using the Browse button. MyDraw is compatible with OpenOffice spell check dictionaries.

Mailings Tab Page

The Mailings tab lets you configure and perform mail merge operations.

For more information, see the Mail Merge topic.

View Tab Page

The View tab lets you control the visibility, behavior, and settings of various elements in the drawing view.

For more information, see the Drawing View topic.

Application Menu

The application menu appears when you click File. It contains commands for saving and loading diagrams, printing, exporting, and more.

It also includes the About dialog, from where you can see the version of MyDraw that you are using and also activate the product for commercial use.

From the Options dialog, you can change the UI theme, switch the application language, enable Developer Mode, and configure other application-wide settings and preferences.

The menu also includes a New option that opens the Start Screen.

The right side of the application menu displays recently opened or saved documents, with the option to pin important ones.