How do I connect curved lines to make one drawing?

[bluebear]

I used Autoshapes (curved lines) to draw a frog. Now I want to connect all my
curved lines together, to make one shape that I can fill in. They all look
visibly connected on the screen, but they are not - when I choose Fill Color,
it only fills in pieces of the drawing. Can I connect all the curved lines
together, so I have the shape of a frog, and I can fill it in with color?

 

[Jay Freedman]

I used Autoshapes (curved lines) to draw a frog. Now I want to connect all my
curved lines together, to make one shape that I can fill in. They all look
visibly connected on the screen, but they are not - when I choose Fill Color,
it only fills in pieces of the drawing. Can I connect all the curved lines
together, so I have the shape of a frog, and I can fill it in with color?

Click the Select Objects tool (on the Drawing toolbar in Word 2003 or earlier,
or on the Select button of the Home ribbon in Word 2007). Drag a selection box
around all the curves, or hold Ctrl while you click each curve in turn, until
they're all selected simultaneously. Right-click any of the curves and choose
Grouping > Group. Then you can use the Fill tool.

 

[bluebear]

Thanks for the response. Grouping actually doesn't work for this. The auto
fill tool then fills in only pieces of the drawing even if the drawing
appears to be closed off, and it also doesn't all you to fill different
colors in areas that are separated. I think what I was wanting to do is
actually a bit too complex for Word.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If you actually used the Curve tool to create the lines, try right-clicking
on your design and experimenting with Edit Points and Close Path.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[bluebear]

Thanks! That does work, but for the thing I was doing, it actually changes
the drawing because I had lots of pieces of the drawing done separately. But
I learned my lesson when using the Curve tool - you have to make sure you
draw one complete shape with one Curve line and bring the ending point back
around to the starting point, which is what I didn't do in the beginning.

Thanks for the responses!

 

[halfskip]

one continuous curve

I used Autoshapes (curved lines) to draw a frog. Now I want to connect all my
curved lines together, to make one shape that I can fill in. They all look
visibly connected on the screen, but they are not - when I choose Fill Color,
it only fills in pieces of the drawing. Can I connect all the curved lines
together, so I have the shape of a frog, and I can fill it in with color?

I have had similar problems. The only solution I have found is to make the shape out of 1 continuous curve that is closed off. Its a bit fiddely, but using the edit points function you can add lots of points in close together, and arrange them to make 'pseudo' corners and straight lines. The best way to do this is draw your overall shape big (i use full screen landscape) and zoom in on particular areas. Drawing over a template helps too. Because the curved line function in word is vector based, you can reduce the size once you're finished (hold shift to keep the aspect ratio fixed), and at a reduced size looks verry effective. To put in different coloured sections you will have to draw them separately and overlay them. Drawing this way is time consuming and labour intensive but, as far as I know, unavoidable without using different software. Hope this helps.