Pasting copied shapes works more logically in Visio 2013 and Visio
2010 than it did in previous versions of the product. If you copy one
or more shapes from Page-1 and then paste them onto Page-2, Visio will
paste them into the same position on Page-2 that they occupied on
Page-1. Versions prior to Visio 2010 always pasted shapes into the
center of the drawing window. Occasionally this was what you wanted,
but as often as not, this placement required additional dragging and
nudging.
In this exercise, you will use several techniques for copying and
duplicating shapes in order to learn the differences in behavior among
the techniques.
Note
SET UP You need the Basic ShapesA_start drawing located in the Chapter02 practice file folder to complete this exercise. Open the drawing in Visio and save it as Copy & Paste.
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Press Shift+click to select the Octagon and Circle shapes on Page-1, and press Ctrl+C to copy them.
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To the right of the Page-1 name tab (below the drawing page), click the Insert Page button.
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Press Ctrl+V to paste the shapes onto Page-2 (following graphic on the right). Notice that they are placed in the identical position on the page that they occupy on Page-1 (following graphic on the left).
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Click the Page-1 name tab to return to that page.
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Select and copy the Triangle shape on the drawing page.
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Drag the Square
shape to the right and drop it beyond the right end of the drawing
page. Visio automatically expands the page size to contain the new
shape because Auto Size is on by default for this diagram type,
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Scroll the drawing page to the left so that the only visible shape is the square.
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Press Ctrl+V to
paste a copy of the triangle onto the drawing page. Visio pastes the
shape into the center of the drawing window. If the original triangle
had still been visible, Visio would have pasted the new triangle next
to the existing one. But because it was not, Visio chose the center of
the drawing window.
Tip
The paste behavior in this step is different from what happens in
Visio 2010. In that version of the software, using Ctrl+V always places
the pasted shape next to the original shape (offset a small amount down
and to the right), even if you scroll the original shape off the
screen. Many people find this frustrating, because if your goal is to
paste the copied shape in a distant location, Visio still scrolls back
to the original shape.
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On the Home tab, in the Zoom group, click Fit to Window.
In the next two steps, you will use a technique that enables you to control exactly where pasted shapes will be placed.
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Select and copy the Circle shape.
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Right-click in the upper-right corner of the page and click Paste. Visio pastes the circle at the location where you right-clicked.
Duplicating shapes is often faster and easier than copying and pasting,
especially if you want to reproduce the same shape(s) multiple times.
In the final step of this exercise, you will duplicate shapes.
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Draw a bounding box around the square and triangle shapes on the right side of the page to select them, and then press Ctrl+D twice to duplicate the shapes twice.
Note
KEYBOARD SHORTCUT You can also duplicate shapes by holding down the Ctrl key while dragging the shape(s) with the mouse.
Note
CLEAN UP Save your changes to the Copy & Paste drawing and close it.
