The Toolbar

The contextual toolbar that appears when you select one or more elements.

Select something on the canvas and a toolbar appears next to it, holding the quick actions for what you have selected. It is contextual: it shows up only when there is a selection, and its contents change to match. A small caption above it names the selection, for example "Selected Square".

Selected SquareCheckout
With one shape selected, the toolbar floats beside it with More, Add Text, Duplicate, layer order, Lock and Delete.

One element selected

From left to right:

  • More (⋯): opens the element's full menu, the same one a right-click opens, with its colours, borders, text styling and the rest. See Context Menus.
  • Add Text (or Edit Text once the element has some), and Edit Points on a path (drawn with the Path tool), to adjust its points and curves.
  • On a mind map node, Add Child and Add Sibling.
  • Duplicate.
  • Bring to Front and Send to Back.
  • Lock (or Unlock) and Delete.

Which buttons show depends on the element: an image has no text to add, and a locked element hides Edit Points and the mind-map buttons, and its Delete is greyed out until you Unlock it. To comment on an element, open More and choose Add Comment under Collaborate. On a link that can't edit, where there is no element menu, the toolbar holds just a comments button instead: Add Comment on a Participant link, so you can still join a discussion, and Show Comments on a view-only link, only on an element that already has comments, to read them (embeds and Community posts show no comments).

Several elements selected

Drag a marquee or Shift-click to select several, and the toolbar switches to the actions that make sense across a group:

  • More (⋯): the selection's menu, for styling everything at once.
  • Filter Selection (only when the selection mixes kinds): narrows it by type, so you can marquee over a busy area and keep, say, just the arrows. See Multi-Select.
  • Duplicate, with the arrows between the selected elements included.
  • Combine (on a logo page, when the shapes can be combined): unite, subtract, intersect or exclude them into one shape.
  • Export: export just these elements.
  • Lock (or Unlock) and Delete.

The caption reads "Selected Elements" with a count.

Selected Elements (3)CartPay
Select a mix of elements and the toolbar switches to More, Filter Selection, Duplicate, Export, Lock and Delete.

The toolbar follows your selection so the controls are always close to what they affect, and disappears the moment you deselect, handing the canvas back. Beside a selected shape or arrow, the Quick Style panel offers the most-used colours and widths too.

In power user mode on a computer, More leaves the toolbar (right-click instead), and with Minimal Chrome on so do the caption and the bin (press Delete instead). Touch screens keep More and the bin, since they can't right-click or press Delete; the caption is hidden there too.

To copy one element's look onto others, use the Format tool in the Palette's selection-mode dropdown (see Format Painter).

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