Rotating graphic objects
As for the position and the size, rotation of an object can be done manually or using a dedicated dialog. To rotate a graphic manually, do as follows:
- Select the graphic object if necessary so that the green handles around it show.
- Click the Rotate button
on the Drawing toolbar. This toolbar is usually located at the bottom the screen, but it can be undocked and used as a floating toolbar. If the toolbar is not showing, select View > Toolbars > Drawing. The Drawing toolbar is discussed in detail in
Chapter 5.
- Eight red handles replace the green square handles, as shown below. Move the mouse over one of the corner handles and the mouse cursor shape will change. Click the mouse and move in the direction in which you want to rotate the graphic object.
- When satisfied release the mouse button.
 | The icons representing the functions in the toolbars are different depending on the operating system used and on whether OOo has been customized for the Linux distribution in use or not. When in doubt, hover the mouse over the icons and wait for the tooltip to appear showing the name of the button.
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Shape showing the red rotating handles. Only the corner ones are active.
At step 2 a black crosshair with a circle appears in the middle of the picture: this represents the pivot point for the rotation. Normally the center of the picture will be just fine, but on some occasions you may wish to rotate around a corner or even around a point outside the picture; to do that, click on the crosshair and drag it to the desired position.
To restrict the rotation angles to multiples of 15 degrees, press the Shift key while rotating the graphic. This is very handy to rotate pictures of right angles, for example from portrait to landscape or vice versa.
Instead of rotating a graphic object manually, you can use the Rotation dialog shown below. To display this dialog, select the graphic object so that the green resizing handles are shown, then press F4 or select Format > Position and Size and select the Rotation page.
The Rotation page of the Position and Size dialog.
In the top part of the dialog, select the position of the pivot point relative to the top left corner of the page. The default position of the pivot point is the center of the figure.
In the lower part of the dialog select the angle by which to rotate the graphic object. On the right hand side 8 default rotation values are easily configurable by selecting the desired button.
