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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.

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  • Without testing anything myself, I'd suggest turning off the grid entirely. Then you can use your Shift and Ctrl keys to help you draw straight lines as well as keep aspect ratios while resizing.
    – computercarguy
    Commented Nov 30, 2017 at 17:14
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    Have you tried holding down Shift while dragging? In most applications, that forces the line to be indexed every 90 or 45 degrees.
    – DrMoishe Pippik
    Commented Nov 30, 2017 at 23:06
  • Holding shift while dragging in this case does not work. It snaps to the near vertical / horizontal line. Turning snap to grid on allows either end to snap to a most points, just not the horizontal or vertical ones
    – Martin Evans
    Commented Nov 22, 2021 at 20:38

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
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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 (mouse up) at the end of the line

In any Word versions 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

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

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

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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.

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