Answered

Can I keep Text box "On"

  • 3 September 2020
  • 6 replies
  • 747 views

Userlevel 2

I need to add many text boxes to a screenshot. Every time I add one the T sign becomes inactive and I need to click on it again for another box.

Google docs have a feature where you press “paint” and it stays on until you deactivate it. Same for Word.

icon

Best answer by Robert Johnson 4 September 2020, 04:47

View original

6 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +12

@Samantha - I have never seen the behavior you are describing where the side navigation bar’s T icon is unavailable. Hopefully this was just a ‘glitch”. As a workaround/shortcut, you can also press the T keyboard button to start a text box.

In your case this may work better as you could:

  1. move your cursor over the image where you want to put your text
  2. press the T key to create a new text box
  3. add your text
  4. click somewhere else on the image where you want your next text, press the T key again, and repeat

Another handy shortcut in Miro is that when you double-click on a blank space on the board, it remembers the last object you created and creates another one - however, this wouldn’t work well for you in the use case you have described as double-clicking an image doesn’t currently do anything.

Here’s a link to the Shortcuts and Hotkeys help article.

Userlevel 2

Thank you, @Rob Johnson . I haven’t said it is unavailable. I was saying I can’t toggle it between active and inactive states. Would be a nice feature.

Userlevel 7
Badge +12

 @Samantha Good point re unavailable vs. inactive - I used the wrong wording to use. I think I’ve got it now:

 First, I believe by inactive you mean not blue, like this:

 

And when you click the T to write some text, it goes active/blue, like so:

I got thinking about this some more and found a way you could, with a bit of practice, get really fast at using the keyboard only to create a bunch of text boxes.

**WARNING** The rest of this gets real geeky, so leave now if that’s not your thing!

Even before I understood what you were saying about active/inactive, I was even thinking that active = Edit mode (when your cursor is in the object, so you can enter some text, but I knew wasn’t right. However, this led me to the Ctrl+D for creating duplicates of objects in a Miro board. I gave Ctrl+D a quick try and when in edit mode and it activated the Chrome browser’s bookmarking feature. I then tried entering some text and then pressed the Esc key and then Ctrl+D and bingo!

Creating text boxes really quick without even touching the mouse

So here are the steps:

  1. Press the T key to create a text box
  2. Enter some text
  3. Press the Esc key
  4. Press Ctrl+D to create a new text box directly to the right of your last one
  5. The press the Enter key to go into Edit mode
  6. Now you need to delete the old text, so Ctrl+A to highlight the current text
  7. Now type type your new text and it will automatically overwrite the old/highlighted text
  8. Repeat steps 3-7

Here it is in action, all done with the keyboard only:

 

Userlevel 2

@Rob Johnson it’s all great advice but what I need is a feature. :smile:  Posted into ideas.

Userlevel 7
Badge +12

While you wait for a feature, if you still need to add many text boxes to a screenshot without having to click on the T sign again for another box, here’s yet another way to add many text boxes (or shapes or Cards) to a Miro board with just type-enter, type-enter and then a few mouse clicks using the Sticky Notes Bulk Mode feature.

In short, you create a bunch of stickies and then switch them all to wide stickies, shapes, text, or Cards.

Here’s a quick demo:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ia7BdXDUVsiK39KlWqngkW_7FeMnFlQ_/view

Userlevel 2

@Rob Johnson this is great! The point with the idea (which is frankly stolen from Word by Google and over to Miro) is to reduce the number of clicks :).

Reply