Microsoft Word – How to Add Additional Connector Points to Shapes

YGA may want to do what I have been trying to do, that is:

Add additional "elbows" to an existing elbow connector in order to fine tune the layout of the connector. For example, to make the connector go around some other object rather than through it (which might be the effect powerpoint automatically applies). The only solutions I have found so far is to fake powerpoint out by inserting other objects and/or rotating objects to cause the effect to be applied by powerpoint automatically, then removing any extra objects. Clumsy.

In Word 2010 on Windows, as noted by K V, shapes can be resized using Shift+(arrow key) combinations:

• Shift+→ (right arrow) – Increase shape width

• Shift+← (left arrow) – Decrease shape width

• Shift+↑ (up arrow) – Increase shape height

• Shift+↓ (down arrow) – Decrease shape height

These resize operations are 'coarse,' as they resize the shape by several pixels for each keypress. If a finer resize resolution is needed, use Ctrl+Shift+(arrow key) instead.

In my hands, all of these resizes operate in a 'centered' fashion for floating shapes: the position of the shape on the page doesn't change as it's resized.

To note, this does not work in Word 2007 for Windows; the behavior instead is that described by OP in his comment to K V's answer, where the selection just hops over to the main text of the document. While I don't know of a simple keyboard shortcut for resizing in this situation, a possible workaround is to use the Size tools in the Drawing Tools Ribbon menu:

On my system, shapes can be resized in increments of 0.01" via this approach.