How to click and drag to select multiple objects

[lmartins]

Just starting out with Affinity and im loving it.

One things bothers me though, can't find a way to quickly click to drag multiple objects. 

 

Any tips please?

[Ben]

You can select multiple objects with the Move tool, then drag them as one - the hint line gives this and other helpful information.

[lmartins]

That is the expected behaviour but for some reason in some circumstances it doesn't work that way, not sure why.

Thanks.

[TonyB]

By default it will only select items in your current layer. You can change this by selecting the 'Edit all layers' button on the bottom of the layer panel.

[lmartins]

Weird. I was trying on a set of objects that were part of the same layer, didn't work consistently. With that option enabled I haven't had any issues so far though.

 

Thanks for the tip.

[retrograde]

You can select multiple objects with the Move tool, then drag them as one - the hint line gives this and other helpful information.

 

Hi, for some reason I never look down there at the hint line. I will try to use it more often, but I think with a lot of visually oriented people it gets overlooked as we tend to want to tinker to figure things out, stumbling along when the answer is right down there in front of us...  :rolleyes:

[MaxClass]

lmartin,

 

Do you have “Marquee Select on Touch” checked in Preferences>User Interface. My personal preference.

 

That way you only have to select a portion of any entity in order to select the entirety of it.

 

Max



[lmartins]

Oh, nice, that is even better. Works similar to im used to in Sketch and it is way nicer. Thanks for the tip Max.

 

lmartin,

 

Do you have “Marquee Select on Touch” checked in Preferences>User Interface. My personal preference.

 

That way you only have to select a portion of any entity in order to select the entirety of it.

 

Max



[Ripul]

Can I select multiple objects in one mouse drag ? I seem to be trying but I am unable to select multiple objects, it just selects the current layer. I tried grouping them and then selecting but it does not work. How do I move a vector object across different files in affinity designer ?

[toltec]

If you start to drag a marquee above a background image, it will only select the background.

You need to start to drag from outside the background image. Then it will only select the images the marquee completely surrounds., not the background image.

Alternatively, press down Ctrl + Alt and it will not select the background, only the objects the marquee surrounds. This is for a PC, I guess it is Cmd + Alt on a Mac.

Note: That will only work if the background is not selected already. 

The easiest way is to deselect the background is to click on one of the objects you want to select (which selects that instead of the background) press Ctrl + Alt and then drag around everything you want.

 

[GarryP]

@PaoloT It seems that your previous question about this was split from this thread and given its own thread:
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/166634-how-to-drag-to-select-nodes-from-multiple-layers-split/

(The split was probably made because this thread is around three years old and the subjects aren’t totally related.)

You can hide the post in this thread ('three dots icon' at top-right of your post) and continue the discussion in the new thread.

[PaoloT]

5 hours ago, GarryP said:

your previous question about this was split from this thread

Thanx! I was wondering why I had lost my post!

Paolo