Connectors and custom anchor points.

Why?

Create your own custom connector points in PowerPoint.

Connectors are very important tools in PowerPoint drawing. They attach themselves to PowerPoint shapes, and will move with that shape as it is moved around the slide. This tutorial will show many things:

1. How to use and attach connectors,

How to add custom anchor points by:

2. drawing them,

3. pasting them as an enhanced metafile,

4. using a hidden autoshape.

Method One

We start with an auto shape.

In this case, a hexagon.



When they are drawn, we then change them to something we can see against the background. You, of course may not need to do this step!



Now it is time to look at the connectors.



Connectors are cool little lines, with or without arrow ends, that cling to anchor points on auto shapes. When we select one, we can hover the mouse over an object, and the anchor points will change colour. First, however, I am going to drag this menu off to have it available when I want it.



I have selected a straight connector.



This is what happens when the mouse is moved over an object with anchor points.



Note the little blue dots where the hexagon lines change direction. These are the points where we can attach our connector.



When we click on the image at the left, the connector attaches itself to the closest node. When we move the mouse to the other shape, we notice that blue dots will appear on it. As we move to different areas on that shape, the connector will jump between different points. This highlights which anchor point the connector will attach itself to next.



When we click again and "set" the second connector attachment, the dots turn to red to show attachment.



What we have just done could be done again for more connectors.

Method Two

 
© Glen Millar

Last Updated: March 28, 2005