Russ' Do It Yourself Home Workshop

I’m not a fan of the tool ribbon and Microsoft’s propensity to move commands around to the point where they are just as unusable as they were in prior versions of Office.  Here’s a way to make the "Distribute Shapes" command (that’s somewhat buried) easier to get to in Visio 2010.

Here’s our end goal:  Add a new menu group on the Home tool ribbon tab called "Distribute" that contains our Space Shapes commands.  We’re going to add it between the Shape group and the Arrange group.

First you need to navigate to the Customize Ribbon section of the Visio options.  Select File | Options (I’m so glad they put the File menu back…aren’t you?).  Alternatively, you could select the More Commands… item in the Customize Quick Access Toolbar drop-down and select Customize Ribbon on the left. 

 

When you get to the options dialog, make sure you have Customize Ribbon selected in the left panel.

On the right side, expand the Home tab.

With the Home tab selected, click on the New Group button.

Select All Commands from the drop-down on the left and then scroll until you find Space Shapes. 

Add it to the right side.  It should end up in the new custom group you created.

With Space Shapes selected, click the Rename button and find the icon you want to use.  The one I used is near the bottom left.  I left the display name as "Space Shapes."  Click OK.

You should have something that looks like this.

Now rename the New Group by selecting it and clicking the Rename button.  I named mine "Distribute."

This is what you should end up with.

Use the up arrow button to move it between the Shape and Arrange groups.

Click OK on the Visio Options dialog and you should see your new Distribute group with Space Shapes prominently displayed!

Now, get on with your work…