Thomas:
I currently find myself in this same situation, and let me pass along the workaround I’ve been using. And as you might guess, it (usually) involves fewer operations than the suggestions in your short list.
The situation is a
dynamic screen flow map I’ve built with hundreds of screenshots. Having put the map together, we’re now using it to define the upgraded screens. That means inserting new buttons, covering up old ones, adding fields, links, and text, covering old ones, and lots of other tweaks to each original screenshot. The result is one big picture shape at the back with lots of little shapes all over the front of it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve missed clicking the little shape and grabbed the big one by mistake, then it’s ctrl-Z to the rescue.
My workaround is to simply click anywhere off page, then lasso the little shape(s) I’m interested in. I’ve been doing it so often these days that it’s become almost automatic. (Emphasis on the “almost”.) The only downside with the approach is that I sometimes hit the scroll bar and everything shifts. No ctrl-Z rescuing available against that!
Never thought of automating a solution until you mentioned it. The obvious choice, and one in keeping with my predilection to avoid doing anything I don’t have to do, is to tweak
the double click trick I recently mentioned. Specifically, if you click on a shape that’s a substantial fraction of the page size, say 50% or more, you use VBA to unselect it after the first click, then only select it for real on the second click. I already have a stencil-based form set up where I specify options, so I could turn it on and off there, and define the percentage of a page that triggers the behavior.
Seems no biggie. If I find the time, let me give it a shot.
- Ken
