It is often convenient to group shapes together so that they are treated as a single shape by Impress. A group of shapes can be formatted as if it was a single shape, moved, rotated, deleted and so on. To group shapes together, do as follows:

1. Select the shapes to be grouped. To do this, use the selection tool on the drawing toolbar and draw a rectangle around the shapes to be grouped, or click on each shape to be added to the group while pressing the Shift key.
2. When the green resizing handles show, select Format > Group > Group or press Control+Shift+G on the keyboard.

Once the group is defined, click on any of the shapes in the group to select the group. To edit only the elements of the group, press F3 when the group is selected or select Format > Group > Enter group from the menu bar. Notice that the elements not part of the group are grayed out and that only the shapes belonging to the group can be edited. Use this function when you need to apply a particular format to a single member of the group. To exit from group mode, press Control+F3 or select Format > Group > Exit group from the menu bar.

For more about working with grouped objects, see Chapter 6 (Combining Multiple Objects) in the Draw Guide.

To ungroup objects:

1. Select the group of shapes.
2. When the green resizing handles show, select Edit > Format > Group > Ungroup from the menu bar.

If you use the grouping and ungrouping often, why not adding them to one of the toolbars shown by default so that the commands are readily available? To do so, you will need to customize the selected toolbar. See Chapter 12 of the Getting Started guide.