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Getting Around Visio

Zoom

Zoom is an invaluable tool in Visio, and there are several ways of doing it, some quicker that others. One way is to pull down the View menu from the menu bar. The first five items of the View menu (in cascading view format) deal with zooming, and the fifth item, Zoom, gives another menu with various magnifications to choose from.

These features can also be obtained by using the zoom box on the top right of the toolbar, which allows you to quickly select or key in the desired magnification.

Another way to zoom is to press F6, which brings up a dialog box and gives you the same options as the previous two methods.

A fourth zoom method produces similar choices by right clicking on the drawing and selecting View from the short cut menu.

Better Ways to Zoom

Accelerator keys make zooming much easier and faster by avoiding multitudes of pull down menus. Pressing Ctrl-W quickly zooms to whole page and pressing Ctrl-I zooms the page to 100%.

To zoom more progressively hold down Ctrl and Shft and then left click the mouse to zoom in, or right click to zoom out. Notice that when Ctrl and Shft are held at the same time the cursor changes to a magnifying glass. Repeated clicks increase or decrease the zoom factor.

Another accelerated way to zoom is to hold down Ctrl and Shft, left click, then drag a selection net around the object or area to be zoomed. This is a convenient form of zooming because it places the contents of the selection net at the middle of the screen.

Panning

When magnification is too close to view the entire page, the screen can be panned. One way to pan is to use the scroll bars at the bottom and right sides of the drawing page. Another way is to hold down Ctrl and Shft, right click, and drag the cursor.

Notice that when Ctrl and Shft are pressed the cursor changes to a magnifying glass as if to zoom. The cursor only changes to a hand after the right button is clicked and the cursor is moved.

Intellimouse Support

Visio also supports the new Microsoft IntelliMouse for many navigation functions. Holding the Ctrl key while scrolling the top wheel of the IntelliMouse allows you to quickly zoom in and out of a drawing.

In addition to adding zoom functions, Visio’s Intellimouse support includes panning. To pan a drawing using the IntelliMouse, press firmly on the top wheel. This will cause a "base" icon and a "direction" icon to appear on your screen. While continuing to hold the top wheel, move the direction icon away from the base icon to pan in that direction.

Alternately, you can scroll the wheel to pan the drawing: scrolling the wheel up and down will pan your drawing up and down. Scrolling the wheel while holding the Shft key will pan the drawing left and right.

When panning using the Ctrl-Shft combination or the IntelliMouse, it is worth noting that Visio limits panning to the edges of the defined page size. Most of the time this shouldn’t cause a problem, because all of the shapes will be located on the page. However, if a shape is located far enough off of the page, you will not be able to pan to it using the Ctrl-Shft combination. Instead, try using the scroll bars or standard zooming functions.

The Visio Basics tutorial is based on training material devised, created and delivered by Visimation.

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