In Using Shortcut Keys Saves Time!, I shared some of the most useful shortcut keys available in CorelDRAW. Along with that post, I included a picture of my keyboard which is admittedly dirty from constant usage. One commenter didn’t like my keyboard and another said I should have listed the alignment shortcut keys. So today I have a different keyboard photo and the requested alignment shortcuts. For those wanting a lot more way to save time, please consider CorelDRAW X6 Unleashed as it contains more than 600 pages of detailed information plus more than 13 hours of tutorial videos.
I constantly hear complaints from people because the Ctrl + A shortcut key no longer brings up the Align and Distribute dialog box in CorelDRAW (it now is Select All). Once you learn the shortcuts listed below, you won’t care about it anymore. Note that these shortcuts only work in CorelDRAW 9 and newer. Of course you could customize Ctrl + A to once again bring up the Align and Distribute dialog box (or Docker) if you really desire.
Select multiple objects. The last object selected will remain stationary and the others will align to that object.
- Press T to align the top of the objects
- Press B to align the bottom of the objects
- Press L to align the left edge of the objects
- Press R to align the right edge of the objects
- Press C to align the objects horizontally
- Press E to align the objects vertically
- Press P to center all objects on the page
I am having trouble figuring out how to align multiple objects on a page. For example, I have two objects. For the sake of this post lets say my page size is 2′ x 6′. My objects are a baseball and the word baseball. I want even spacing between the left edge and the ball, the ball and the word baseball, and the baseball and the right edge all centered on the 2’x6′ page. Think of it as a banner.
Centered is centered and what you’ve described sounds to be only vertically centered and not horizontally. I’d probably use guidelines to handle the horizontal alignment.
I was hoping there was a way to do this without having to use math. Equal horizontal spacing between objects and the page edges.
Between objects is easy using the Distribute functions. But that doesn’t resolve the same distance to page borders.
Found a solution…
If you put a line down the left and right side of the page border and include that in your align/distribute horizontally, it will give equal distance between page edge and all objects!