Mouseover shape handles "not working": "Solved"

[gwideman]

As noted in Visio 2010, may apply to other versions.

Sometimes it's necessary to edit the position of the vertices of a shape. A convenient way to do that is to select the shape, then hover the mouse over the shape for a second or two, after which small handles appear at the vertices, and also a "bend" handle in the middle of each line segment.

Except sometimes they don't.

One obvious workaround is to select the Pencil tool, which then makes visible these same handles, or the Line tool, which makes just the vertex handles appear (no bend handles). And in each case, you can use Ctrl-click on an edge to add new vertices.

This other thread has a picture: http://visguy.com/vgforum/index.php?topic=5737.0

One problem with those tools is that on shapes that are not closed, the tools let you move the intermediate vertices, but not the end points. Attempting to move an  endpoint results instead in extending the shape with a new line segment. Grrr!

This is unlike the behavior of the vertex handles that appear on hover (with arrow cursor), where all handles can be moved, including the end points (but there's no feature to add vertices or extend the shape).

So, for this reason or others, you might really really need the vertex handles to appear from just hovering the arrow cursor, rather than selecting one of those tools.

It turns out that the conditions that allow the mouseover handles to appear are arcane and almost impossible to discover.

As recounted in several other tale-of-woe threads on the net, one requirement is to set the File > Options > Advanced "Show more shape handles on hover".

But this is not sufficient to turn these handles on.

It appears that if a Shape is linked to a Master (on the Document Stencil), then handles will not appear on Mouseover hover.

Assuming that the aforementioned Option is enabled, you can make handles appear on such a Shape by deleting its Master in the Shape Stencil (ie: The document's Masters collection.)

That move might be a bit drastic if you have many Shapes that all depend on that Master and you'd like most of them to stay that way.  Instead, you can drag your shape onto the Document Stencil (creating a new Master), drag that back to the page (reinstating the shape you want), then delete that Master from the Stencil.

An alternative way to break the link from a Shape to its Master:  Use Developer > Group > Convert to Group. You can then Ungroup the Shape to return its structure to that of an ordinary Shape, now minus its association to a Master.

Hope this helps someone else vexed by this "feature".

- Graham