How can I rotate an object?

Once upon a time, unless I’m dreaming which could well be the case, I was able to paste an object onto Open Office Writer and then rotate it which was rather convenient. The objects were merely things like a rectangle or some other shape. Now, I have to go to view object properties, click on rotate, then guess at the number of degrees needed to rotate the desired amount. Needless to say, I’m not only a bad guesser but impatient as well.

Is it possible that I could do this rotation bit in Microsoft Word but not in Open Office? Say it’s not so.