Why can't I draw horizontal/vertical lines in Word 2016?

Question

I am trying to draw a simple diagram consisting of a few boxes with some texts inside and some arrows connecting them... I recall this being trivial in earlier versions of Word.

But now I have Word 2016 (yay, err... not). Along with the customary moving everything around so I can't find anything there appears to be some default setting that inhibits me from drawing lines that are perfectly horizontal or vertical. Horizontal being like this:

---

and not:

╲
 ╲
  ╲

• So I click: Insert → Shapes → Line Arrow.
• I click on the page and a line arrow appears. It is diagonal (45 degrees).
• I grab one end and drag it around until it is vertical/horizontal.

But what happens is that the arrow moves around smoothly until its nearly horizontal/vertical... and then it jumps past that point.

I have tried messing around with "snap objects to grid when grid is not shown" and I have displayed the grid - I can see that it is snapping to something...but its not the grid!

I tried this in a brand new document with nothing else on it... same issue.

Can someone put me out of my misery!?

The only time I managed to draw a perfectly horizontal line was when I had two boxes and I drag-clicked the line from box 1 to box 2... but when I try to move the line later it goes back to its default setting as explained above.

Answer 1

Indeed, I have the same frustration. The only sollution I found is to manually set the hight of the line to zero.

Answer 2

You're doing it the wrong way!

To draw a horizontal, vertical or 45° line, after selecting the type of line in "Shapes", press Shift then drag to draw the line. You're clicking once instead of doing a mouse down at the starting point and then lift the finger at the end of the line

In Word version the special keys to draw has always been:

• Shift: align to a multiple of 45°
• Alt: align to a multiple of 15°
• Alt+Ctrl: align to a multiple of 1°
• Ctrl: make the position of the first click the center point instead of the starting point

You can even put the starting and/or ending points at the anchor points of special objects (like textboxes) so that when you move those objects around, the lines will also moved automatically

See Draw straight lines or align things with the ruler in PowerPoint

Answer 3

When you draw the line then hold down the Shift key. The drawing direction is now restricted to either vertical or horizontal.

Answer 4

Try creating an arrow: Start with a line then add an end or beginning pointer. That's the only method I've found, and it's relatively easy as Microsoft workarounds go.