How to Massively Upgrade Your Organizing Skills With Miro
By: Martin Andersson Aaberge
Tags: Learning, Software, Tutorial, Miro, Organizing

Objects

Elements you place on your board are referred to as objects. Miro comes with a variety of objects. Let’s have an in-depth look at them.

Text

One of the simplest objects in Miro is text. To create a text object, click the T on the side menu or hit t on your keyboard.

Create Text, screenshot by author

There are many ways to change the text object. Click the object and edit it from the menu that appears above it.

Font

Size

Bold, Italic, Underline

Alignment

Lists

Links

Text Color

Background Color

Outline

Opacity

Different text formatting options, graphics by author

Sticky notes

If you have seen Miro before, you have most likely seen pictures of the post-its, sorry… sticky notes, on the boards. It is iconic and widely used.

To create a sticky note, click the icon on the left menu or hit n on your keyboard.

Create a Sticky Note, screenshot by author

Sticky notes also have some options.

Text size

Text type

Alignment

Preset Size

Tags

Emojis

Link

Sticky notes in action, screen capture by the author

The sticky notes tool has a bulk option which allows you to add multiple notes in one go.

When you click the sticky notes icon on the left menu, select bulk mode at the bottom. This is a brilliant way to add several sticky notes if you know what you need beforehand.

when you click the sticky notes icon, you can quickly select a color or use bulk mode, screenshot by author

Adding objects is very easy, screenshot by author

Sticky notes added to the board from the input during bulk mode setup, screenshot by author

Shapes

Shapes is one of my favorite functions. You can add a variety of shapes to build your node trees or if you simply need a shape to assist your board in any way.

To create a shape, click the square icon in the left menu or hit s on your keyboard. (If you replace the square shape, the currently selected shape will replace the shape icon in the menu)

Create shapes, screenshot by author

When you click the shape icon, you are shown a preset thumbnail list. Pick one from the overview or click all shapes to see all available shapes.

find the shape you want to use, screenshot by author

When you find a shape you like, select it, and click-drag on your board to place it.

shape added to the board

Connection Line

A beautiful thing about Miro is that you can link almost any object to another. The connection line menu lets you create a few different arrows you can use to connect objects.

To create a connection line click the arrow icon on the left menu (remember that this changes based on your last selection) or hit l on your keyboard.

You can link objects by dragging a line directly from one object to the other so this tool is not something I use frequently.

To link two objects at any time, simply select the first and grab one of the blue dots. When you click-drag this dot, you can drag a line between one object to the other. Drag it to the object you want to connect it to.

When you select an object you can see the blue connection dots, graphics by author

Student connected with its constructor, graphics by author

There are many places you can connect the lines, you don’t even have to hit another blue dot, graphics by author

Pen

You can use the pen tool to draw on the whiteboard. This works best with an actual pen, like Wacom or the Apple Pencil, but you can use your mouse as well.

To use the pen tool, select the pen icon from the left menu or hit p on your keyboard.

There are several options for the pen tool.

Pen

Marker

Smart Drawing

Eraser

Lasso Select

Type and Color

Here is a gif showing you how the pen tools work.

Gif showing how the pen tools work, recording by the author

Comments

The little speech bubble on the left menu is the comment tool. Click it or hit c to use the tool. Click anywhere to drop a comment on your board.

Write your comment and hit enter. Your comment is now created and others can reply to it. Tag team members using the @ symbol.

the comment dialog box, screenshot by author

When you are done discussing a note, you can mark it as resolved by sliding the resolve slider to the right.

Upload

Miro has an upload function where you can add material from several sources. Normally, I drag-drop from my computer, but you can link Miro to cloud services if you like and browse material you have stored online.