Draw shapes, freehand lines, and text

You build a drawing in Vector by placing objects on the canvas. Pick a tool, then click or drag to add a shape, a freehand line, a text box, or an image. Charts come from the Insert menu. This page covers each tool and what happens after you place something.

You need editor access to add objects. If you can only view the drawing, the tools are not shown.

Place a shape

1. Open the drawing.
2. Pick a tool from the toolbar: Rectangle, Diamond, or Ellipse. You can also open the Insert menu and choose the same tools by name.
3. Click and drag on the canvas to draw the shape at the size you want.
4. The shape appears and is selected, ready to move or restyle.

A shape needs a drag, not a single click. Drag out the box, and let go when it is the size you want.

After you place a shape, the tool goes back to Select so your next click selects objects instead of drawing another one. To keep drawing, see Keep a tool active below.

Draw a freehand line

1. Pick the Draw tool from the toolbar, or choose Draw from the Insert menu.
2. Press and drag on the canvas to draw. The line follows your pointer.
3. Let go to finish the line.

The Draw tool stays active after each line, so you can keep drawing without picking it again.

Keep a tool active

By default a tool switches back to Select once you place an object, so you don't draw a second one by accident. When you want to place several objects in a row, turn on Keep selected tool. It lives in the Edit menu, or you can press Q to toggle it. With it on, the tool you picked stays active until you change it.

The Draw and Eraser tools stay active on their own, whether or not Keep selected tool is on.

Add text

1. Pick the Text tool from the toolbar, or choose Text from the Insert menu.
2. Click on the canvas to place a text box. It opens straight away for typing.
3. Type your text. A floating toolbar appears with formatting options such as bold, italic, and lists.
4. Press Escape or click outside the box to finish.

To edit a text object later, double-click it, or select it and press Enter. You can also double-click an empty spot on the canvas to start a new text box there, without picking the Text tool first.

Once a text object is selected but not being edited, the properties panel on the right shows the full set of text options: font, size, color, alignment, and spacing.

Type in a shape

A rectangle, diamond, or ellipse can hold text. Double-click the shape, or select it and press Enter, and type. The text starts in the middle of the shape. Press Escape or click outside to finish.

The text belongs to the shape. When you move, rotate, copy, or delete the shape, the text goes with it. When you resize the shape, the text wraps again at the same size. A text box grows to fit its text, but a shape does not: text that does not fit spills out past the edge of the shape. The properties panel shows the same text options for a shape as for a text box.

Add an image

1. Click Add image in the toolbar, choose Image from the Insert menu, or press 9.
2. The Add image dialog opens. Do one of two things:
   • Click Upload from device to pick a file from your computer.
   • Browse your Drive, click an image to select it, then click Select.
3. The image appears on the canvas.

You can also drag one or more image files from your desktop and drop them onto the canvas. A Drop images to add overlay appears while you drag, and Vector places each image where you drop it.

Add a chart

1. Open the Insert menu and choose Chart, then Bar, Column, Line, or Pie. A bar chart has horizontal bars, a column chart vertical ones.
2. The chart appears in the middle of your view with sample data, and stays selected.

With the chart selected, the properties panel shows its options. The Chart section sets the Type, the Stacking of a bar or column chart (None, Standard or 100%), the Title, where the Legend goes, and the Font of all the chart's text. The Horizontal axis and Vertical axis sections hold each axis's Title and a Show axis box, which hides the axis's labels and line when you clear it. The axis with the categories also has Reverse axis order, which runs it the other way. The axis with the numbers also has Min and Max, which pick their own values while they're empty and are percents on a 100% stack, and Gridlines. Switching Stacking to or from 100% empties Min and Max. Series sets the color of each series, and its Data labels box writes each value on the chart: past the end of a bar, in the middle of a stacked bar, and above each point of a line. When two labels would overlap, one of them hides, and a bigger bar keeps its own. A chart with more than 200 values shows no data labels. The box shows a dash when only some series show their values, as in some imported charts; click it to show them on every series. A pie chart has Slices instead, with a color for each slice. A color reads Automatic until you pick one; Automatic in a picked color's list puts it back.

Below them, Labels sets the Color of all the chart's text. Fill sets the chart's background, and its Style how the bars and slices are drawn: Solid, Hachure, Cross-hatch, or Zigzag. Solid bars and slices have no outline; hatched ones get an outline in their own color. Stroke sets the color, width, and style of the axes and gridlines, and the width of a line chart's lines, except in a chart imported from Office, which keeps its own, and Sketch how rough the chart looks. A chart with more than 200 values (for a pie, more than 200 slices) draws its bars, lines, and slices smooth and solid whatever the sketch, so it stays quick to show; the Sketch section says so.

Edit the numbers

1. Double-click the chart, or click Edit data in the properties panel.
2. The Edit data dialog shows the data as a small spreadsheet: categories down column A, series across row 1, and the category axis title in A1. Click a cell and type to replace it, or double-click it (or press F2) to change part of it. Press Enter to move down or Tab to move right. Escape cancels what you typed in a cell. A cell left empty leaves a gap in the chart.
3. Type in an empty row or column after the data to add a category or a series. To remove one, click its row number or column letter and press Delete. Delete on selected cells empties them.
4. Click Save to update the chart, or Cancel to leave it as it was.

You can paste cells copied from a spreadsheet into the grid, and copy cells out of it. A paste fills the grid from the selected cell, and the grid grows to fit. A chart holds up to 12 series, 200 categories, and 2,000 values; when a paste has more, the dialog says how much it pasted and leaves the rest out. Numbers may have thousands separators, a currency sign or a percent sign, as a spreadsheet shows them. A chart with more data than that, for example from an imported file, opens its data read-only.

Convert to shapes, in the properties panel or the right-click menu, turns the chart into ordinary shapes and text boxes you can edit one by one. You can't turn them back into a chart, but undo (⌘Z, or Ctrl+Z on Windows) right after brings the chart back.

You can paste a chart copied in Sheets, Docs, or Slides onto a drawing, and it stays a chart you can edit. A chart you copy on its own from a drawing pastes into Docs and Sheets the same way; copied together with other objects, it pastes there as one picture. A chart keeps its look, and a chart copied from Sheets keeps the numbers it showed when you copied it. See Arrange and align.

Erase objects

Pick the Eraser tool, then drag across the objects you want to remove. Anything the eraser passes over is deleted. Pick another tool, or press Select, when you are done.

Tool shortcuts

Each tool has a single-key shortcut. Press the key to pick the tool without going to the toolbar.

Tool	Shortcut
Select	V
Rectangle	R
Diamond	D
Ellipse	O
Draw	P
Text	T
Add image	9
Eraser	E
Keep selected tool	Q

The number keys pick the same tools in toolbar order, so 1 is Select, 2 is Rectangle, and so on. The Arrow (A) and Line (L) tools have their own article: Connect objects with arrows.

Once your objects are placed, Style objects covers colors, borders, and fills, and Arrange and align objects covers moving, ordering, and lining things up.