Hi everyone. I'm brand new to Inkscape so my apologies if I don't use the proper terms. I also apologize if I don't get to the point quick as I tend to use too many words, ramble, and sometimes even end up confusing myself.

My 635 mm x 635 mm (25 in x 25 in) canvas (page/artboard) has at least two dozen textboxes, some are rectangular, some are square, with varying amounts of text in each box.

Is there any way that Inkscape can help with the alignment or orientation of all the text boxes?

For example, let's say I have five text boxes in the first row. Is there a way I can make the top border/edge of all the text boxes be even with each other?

I don't know if what I want to do is going to end up being really complicated because my layout is not checkerboard style, some textboxes span multiple rows and/or columns. (And these rows/columns are just words I'm using to  describe the layout, I definitely don't have any fixed rows/columns in Inkscape (unlike Microsoft Excel)).

I also don't know if I need to convert all the text boxes to paths (something I'll eventually need to do anyway to preserve the typeface) before I do the orientating/aligning.

Or, and this just popped into my head, maybe Inkscape has some kind of rulers/graph grid overlay that I can add to my canvas that I can use as a guide and I can just move the boxes all around manually?? Then is there a way I could make the rulers/graph disappear??

Well I'll wrap things up.

Thank you in advance to anyone who can offer me some advice, guidance, and information.

Check out Align & Distribute : https://inkscape-manuals.readthedocs.io/en/latest/align-and-distribute.html It will probably do most of what you want. Set the 'Relative to' dropdown to either First Selected or Last Selected (rather than Page) and click the objects you want aligned and select the type of alignment you want.

You can also create a grid and snap items to it. You can turn on the default grid by hitting '#'. Turn snapping on via the icon at the very top right of the page (it's like a horseshoe rotated onto its side), however be careful to turn off snap options you don't need or it'll go crazy. If you want to adjust the size of the grid, go into Document Properties (on the File menu) then click on the Grid tab. Click New (you probably want Rectangular, so leave that as it is) then on the next screen, you can adjust sizes).

Hi z3z, thank you for your reply!

For starters, I'm trying your second option: "You can also create a grid and snap items to it."

I'm obviously doing something wrong because I'm not getting any kind of snapping effect.

I did turn on the grid using #. When I click the snap icon, nothing happens. I can hover over it and it displays: "snapping, toggling snapping on/off %"

When I lasso/rubberband all the textboxes using the selector tool and then click snap, again nothing happens.

I've been going back and forth between this window and Inkscape and I just discovered  a button next to the snapping icon and clicked it, it turned out to be a menu about snapping so I clicked the button to enable snapping. I repeated rubberbanding and clicking snap icon, nothing happens.

I'm attaching two screen images.

(also please forgive the ridiculous statements/words I put in the text boxes)

Sorry, just heading to bed, so don't have time for a long answer. There's an article here that gives an overview on how snappng works. It's not automatic. You have to position items yourself and they will snap onto the grid corners. The align/distribute panel will move objects for you, but you have to do it yourself with snapping.

I'll give the article a look. I have a very basic/beginner knowledge of Inkscape.

I don't have anything else to add this point, but I'm going to upload my other screen image. I attached both, but only one is displaying.

Hi again z3z. I just wanted to pop back in to say thank you again for your replies.

I definitely think that snapping to a grid will work for my project -- especially since I'm going to be working pretty much with a canvas full of text boxes of various sizes and varying amount of texts in each one. (I know I should eventually learn, understand, practice, and try to master Align & Distribute just in case my previous sentence and thought is wrong since I'm an Inkscape noob.)

I practiced a bit earlier with snapping to grid and I think I'm getting the hang of it, although I don't always see the kind of "guidance lines" or "descriptive text" I want to see. For example, ideally, I'd like the that box to snap to the same horizontal grid line that the top of the text box (just a little bit....) is touching. (screen image attached)

P.S. Okay, I think I'm seeing the kind of guideline lines and descriptive text I want to see because I zoomed in on the canvas and now I'm seeing tons more grid details and I'm snapping much better and things are going where I envisioned them going.

P.P.S. I get email notification of new replies here, so I'm sorry to z3z if you are getting them every time I post a new comment here as I think this is my third comment in this thread in less than 24 hours. 

Hi again! I'm glad you're figuring things out, though I'd strongly encourage you to take another look at the Align & Distribute panel. If you want to align text by the top edges, it's simply a matter selecting the text objects and clicking the Align Top Edges button. The grid is very useful when you want very precise alignment, and perhaps that's what you need, but if it's just a matter of lining up objects by their top, centre, or left/right edges, the Align & Distribute panel will do what you want. Another option I suppose it to use Guides. You can drag a guideline from the ruler onto the canvas and use that to help you align objects. There are always multiple ways of doing things in Inkscape!

I'm glad to hear that there are multiples ways of doing the same thing in Inkscape. It's not like there's only one right way. Even though I'm still a noob, I think snapping textboxes to the grid going to get me the alignment I need. Thank you.