Skip to main content

Group, Ungroup and Regroup disabled in Word

I was editing a Microsoft Word document which had a collection of shapes and text boxes grouped together. I wanted to modify some of the shapes, and therefore I had to ungroup them. But when I right-click the group and open the Group menu, all three options namely Group, Ungroup and Regroup are completely disabled or grayed out.

I couldn’t figure out what’s wrong. This group of objects is perfectly ungroupable, and I can even select objects within the group. However, Microsoft Word 2007 is not letting me ungroup it.

I searched the Internet for a solution, but did not find anything very useful. The closest I came across is this statement: “The type of Text Wrapping doesn't make any difference as long as it isn't In Line with Text.” (Link here)

Anyway, I changed the text wrapping of the group of objects from ‘In line with Text’ to ‘Tight’ and viola! I could now ungroup it and edit it. The document got a bit messed up when I did so, but after I ungrouped, edited and regrouped, I changed the text wrapping back to ‘In line with text’ and everything was back to normal.

Annoyingly, even the Help for Microsoft Word does not mention about this problem or have a note about it in its page teaching you how to group and ungroup objects. And I haven’t found a solution on the Internet either.

Comments

  1. hi ,try changing the layout of the grouped object to float-over-text or not in-line-with-text or in-front-of-text. i hope it be ok.

    ReplyDelete
  2. lol i was not asking for a solution. did you read the post?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for this post! Helped me solve the same problem!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for the help! this was driving me mad, stoopid Word/Microsoft!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I was seconds away from throwing my laptop out the window trying to figure out why some grouped Word elements in Word 2010 could not be ungrouped. Changing the Text Position to anything other than In Line with Text solved my issue. However, it's a total nightmare having to switch between the two modes.

    Thanks for sharing this particular nuance of Word.

    ReplyDelete
  6. No problem, glad I could be of help! Once you change the setting back to "In line with Text," the messed up placement of the grouped objects will return to normal. Not that much of a nightmare.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Fantastic! Nothing on MS, so thankful I saw this. Changing the layout fixed the problem for me. More clunky to do than our previous method, but at least it could be done!
    Appreciate that you took the time to post this.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Thank you by coming out fron "in line with text", group, ungroup and regroup will work.

    ReplyDelete
  9. how about POWERPOINT i want to ungroup some elements in one picture i have loaded it from vector image and group icon is grayed out

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sorry, I don't think that Powerpoint understands vector image files as distinct elements or even supports vector graphics (beyond the rudimentary drawings support). It was probably rasterized into a flat image when imported. I suggest ungrouping in the vector editor (such as Adobe Illustrator) and saving each element as a separate picture. Import all the pictures in Powerpoint and then you can manipulate each element separately in Powerpoint.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Comments are moderated, and are usually posted within 24 hours if approved. You must have a minimum of OpenID to post comments.

Popular posts from this blog

Disable auto save in JetBrains IDE software (IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, PhpStorm)

JetBrains provides the following IDE software: IntelliJ IDEA PhpStorm PyCharm RubyMine WebStorm AppCode CLion Google also provides Android Studio which is powered by the IntelliJ platform. If you come from a different IDE such as Eclipse, you will be unpleasantly surprised to find that JetBrains-branded IDEs automatically save everything the moment you look away. The proponents argue that as you work on your project, you should not have to worry about saving files. But to others, this auto-save behavior which is enabled by default is a curse that catches them by surprise, and a shocking departure from the workflow they are very much used to. You can change the behavior by altering some settings.

How to force redirect HTTP to HTTPS in Amazon Elastic Beanstalk

After picking up bits and pieces over the Internet, here I have the complete guide for my particular setup. My Amazon AWS Elastic Beanstalk (ELB or EBS) is as follows: 64bit Amazon Linux 2016.03 v2.1.1 running Tomcat 8 Java 8 Java/JSP application on Apache Tomcat Maven Build How to get it done: First, configure your EBS instance: Go to Configuration and click the gear on Load Balancing. Under Load Balancer, set the following options: Listener port: 80 Protocol: HTTP Secure listener port: 443 Protocol: HTTPS SSL certificate ID: Choose the cert ID that goes with your server. If you don't have one, you can use Certificate Manager to create one. Apply and save this configuration. Let the server health be OK. Test it by accessing your application web page through both HTTP and HTTPS: HTTP should load the page unsecurely. HTTPS should load the page securely. No port number should be added after the domain name in either case. Then, add a configuration file

Make Samsung DVD-C350 region-free

Update 2: An anonymous commentator has shown me a way to make Region 1 players (such as DVD-H1080R) region-free by first converting it to Region 3, then applying my region-free hack below. For details, click here or look for a comment by an Anonymous user dated 18 April 2011. Update: The instructions in the original post below did not make the DVD player region-free. Instead it only locked it to region 1. Many thanks to Anonymous who posted the first comment on this post, I now have alternate instructions. Note: If you have edited the numbers menu (see original post) , I suggest you return it to the original settings you had backed up. A modified numbers menu may prevent the instructions below from working properly.