EA 10 control_click not selecting multiple objects

[Robert Glover Jr]

   When I am in a Sparx EA 10.10 diagram, holding down the CNTRL key and then left CLICK-ing the mouse on two or more diagram objects does not select multiple objects, it only selects the last object clicked.    Is there a Sparx setting required to make CNTRL_CLICK work as expected?

[Eve]

I haven't seen that happen, but a couple of thoughts.

First, do have have any keyboard or mouse helper utilities installed. I have seen multiple occasions where users have had something like that installed and it has system wide overridden Ctrl+Click behavior.

Second, I have seen a situation where a customized toolbar resulted in the Project Browser selection to change after selecting anything. If you have customized the toolbars at all then you could try resetting them (Tools | Customize)

[Robert Glover Jr]

First, do have have any keyboard or mouse helper utilities installed. I have seen multiple occasions where users have had something like that installed and it has system wide overridden Ctrl+Click behavior.

Second, I have seen a situation where a customized toolbar resulted in the Project Browser selection to change after selecting anything. If you have customized the toolbars at all then you could try resetting them (Tools | Customize)

I do have a Windows setting turned on that makes a circle appear around the mouse when I click only the control key.  

But system wide, Control + click works correctly everywhere else except in a Sparx Diagram  (In this case, a Strategic Modeling...Strategy Map).

As you suggested I did a toolbar reset.

But, I just noticed that it says in the book, "EA In 10 Days":

ctrl + click on the diagram creates a new element of the same type as the last element you created

And sure enough, when I do ctrl + click on a blank place in the diagram it creates a diagram object there.

But I still really need a way to multi-select objects in a diagram.  Do have some other suggestions?

[Aaron B]

Not sure why Ctrl+Click may not be working for you, but maybe try Shift+Click to perform multiple selection instead.  Seems to behave in much the same way as Ctrl+Click for me.  Does Shift+Click work any better?

[skiwi]

Ctrl click works fine for me for entities, except when I accidentally click on a connector, in which case I loose all the entities I have already selected (grrrr).

[Robert Glover Jr]

Ctrl click works fine for me for entities, except when I accidentally click on a connector, in which case I loose all the entities I have already selected (grrrr).

   Yesterday I tried CONTROL CLICK on a diagram using Sparx 10.10 install on my work computer.  It did the same as thing my home computer does (which also runs Sparx 10.10). I.e. CONTROL CLICK selects only the last element clicked and as it does so un-selects the prior element clicked.
    I wonder if this only occurs in Sparx 10.10 but not earlier versions such as 10.08?

[Robert Glover Jr]

I asked a colleague at work to try CONTROL CLICK on his Sparx EA 10.10 installation, and it works correctly for him.  So, that rules out it being a problem related to EA 10.10.  
  I also tried, at work on my own Laptop  turning off the setting I had that makes a circle appear around the mouse when I click the CONTROL key.  Turning that off had no effect-- for me on Sparx EA 10.10 both at work and at home,  it does not do multi-select.  

[Robert Glover Jr]

I was wrong all along.  CONTROL CLICK has been working all this time,  but I was too much of a newbie to realize it was working.  I had expected that the gray outline box would appear around each selected object, but that is not how it works.  That gray outline will always appear around the currently clicked element....   what I had failed to notice is that the trailing selected objects have a less obvious set of small boxes around each selected object.
   So, everything is working and I simply did not know how to recognize what "working okay" looked like.

[qwerty]

  That's what we call EAUI.

q.

[Eve]

For what it's worth. That gray box is showing which element commands such as align left will use to source the position. If you're like me and mostly use the context menu for these commands you can turn off the gray box at Tools | Options | Diagram | Behavior | Always Highlight Context Element.