My ultimate killer app in the 80s was Aldus Pagemaker, which allowed very flexible and agile nudging with numeric position controls in convenient menu panels that were out of the way.
Publisher’s aqua colored grid guides are about 2.5% as functional as PhotoShop; they disappear in the region occupied by the graphic. But I just learned for centering graphic objects, that if you have it selected, with a handle at 12 midnight, on a letter page 8 1/2 wide, you can manipulate the window up and down so the handle will center on the 4 1/4 ruler mark, then nudge left or right to center exactly.