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thomasgoetz's avatar
thomasgoetz
Frequent Visitor
3 months ago
Solved

Constrain visuals & object dragging with Shift key (lock horizontal / vertical movement)

It would be very helpful if Power BI supported a feature to constrain movement when dragging visuals: Hold Shift while dragging a visual Movement locks to horizontal or vertical (keeping X or Y p...
  • freginier's avatar
    3 months ago

    Power BI Desktop doesn't currently have a "hold Shift to lock the drag axis" behaviour like Canva/Illustrator, so this is a good one to add to the Fabric Ideas site (ideas.fabric.microsoft.com) for others to vote on.

     

    In the meantime, a few things that get you most of the way there today:

     

    - Arrow keys move a selected object on one axis only. Select the visual and nudge it with the arrow keys: left/right moves it horizontally, up/down moves it vertically, and the other coordinate stays fixed. That is exactly the axis-lock you want for fine positioning.

    - Exact positioning: with the visual selected, open Format visual > General > Properties > Position and type the X / Y values directly (and Width/Height if needed).

    - View tab > turn on Gridlines and "Snap objects to grid" so free-dragging snaps cleanly.

    - Select multiple visuals (Ctrl+click) and use Format > Align / Distribute to line them up afterwards.

     

    The arrow-key + exact-position combo is usually the fastest way to keep things aligned without re-dragging, but definitely log the Shift-drag idea on the Ideas site as well, it's a sensible request.