can't delete callouts!

[WG, LI]

I created a document in which I placed callouts on top a few graphics. I got
the callouts from the drawing toolbar (AutoShapes > Callouts).

A colleague of mine was creating a different document from which he copied
one of these graphics with the callouts in them to past into his new
document. When he tried to delete the callouts, he couldn't, nor could he
send them to the back behind the graphic. He could, however, delete the main
graphic itself. I've tried to recreate this, but can't - everything deletes
just fine.

Does anyone have an idea why the callouts can't be deleted? Does something
else happen when they're copied over? The only workaround we could think of
was to resize the objects to zero length and width, but it doesn't answer the
obvious question.

Any advice is appreciated,

 

[DeanH]

I can think of a couple of things that could be happening here.
1. The callout could be grouped with the graphic. Go to the Drawing menu for
the Ungroup option.
2. When copied over into the new document, the paste option (say Picture)
could have changed the group to a single object, ie the callout is now merged
with the graphic. No way to resolve this except to go back to the original
document and try to select the graphic only.
Hope this helps.
DeanH