Get Position

Location on ribbon: Tab DVD Addin → Group Graphics → Menu Shape Menu

Command ID: btnShapePositions

What it does

This command reads the coordinates of shapes on the active sheet and writes them into worksheet cells as Top;Left (in points). You supply a range of shape names, and the command looks each name up in the sheet's Shapes collection and returns its position.

It is handy when you need to record the layout of a site plan, an organisation chart or a legend block so you can rebuild it later, or to check whether a set of blocks is aligned without opening the Format Shape pane on each one.

How to use

1. Name the shapes you care about (use Rename Shapes if the default names are hard to follow).
2. Type or paste the list of shape names into a column, then select the range holding those names.
3. Go to tab DVD Addin → group Graphics → Shape Menu → Get Position.
4. The command scans the selected cells one by one, skipping blanks and names it cannot match to a shape.
5. A range picker appears — "Select range to paste positions". Click the destination cell or range and press OK.
6. The positions are pasted in scan order, and a toast reports how many were written.

Example

A site-layout sheet has four named blocks. You select A2:A5 (the names) and then pick B2:B5 as the paste target.

Row	Before (shape name)	After (column B — Top;Left)
2	SiteOffice	72;120
3	MaterialStore	150;120
4	PrecastYard	150;300
5	MainGate	240;60

Column B immediately shows that MaterialStore and PrecastYard share Top = 150, so those two blocks are already aligned horizontally.

Notes

• A cell range must be selected first; if the selection is not a range the command reports "Please select range containing shape names" and stops.
• Only shapes on the active sheet are matched — names belonging to another sheet are silently skipped.
• Blank cells and unmatched names are skipped, so the result list can be shorter than the selection; values are pasted contiguously with no gaps.
• Hold ESC to abort. If you stop during the scan the command exits without opening the paste-target picker.
• The output is a text string Top;Left, not two numbers — use Text to Columns with the ; delimiter to split it.

Related

• Rename Shapes — give shapes meaningful names before reading their coordinates.
• List Shapes — dump every shape on the sheet so you know the exact names.
• Move/Resize — snap a picture or shape back into a cell once you know its position.
• Color Shapes — another bulk operation over the same set of shapes.