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Solid Fills for Slide Backgrounds in PowerPoint 2010

Author: Geetesh Bajaj

Product/Version: Microsoft PowerPoint 2010
OS: Microsoft Windows XP / Vista / 7

Date Created: October 26th 2011
Last Updated: October 26th 2011

Excerpt/Capsule: Learn how to apply solid fills as slide backgrounds in PowerPoint 2010.

PowerPoint 2010 provides umpteen options for your slide backgrounds. While our earlier Format Slide Background in PowerPoint 2010 tutorial provided a generic walkthrough on changing the slide background, this tutorial builds up on the techniques and steps you learned in that tutorial. Your new slide background can be a solid color, a gradient, a texture or a picture, or even one of PowerPoint's built-in patterns. Within this series of tutorials, we will show you how you can choose from any of these background fill options. We start this series with this tutorial that explores solid fills for your slide backgrounds:

1. We assume you have a new presentation created, or you have opened any of your existing presentations. We also assume that you have summoned the Format Background dialog box, as explained in the aforementioned Format Slide Background in PowerPoint 2010 tutorial. Alternatively, just right-click in an empty area of your slide and choose the Format Background option in the resultant contextual menu to bring up the same dialog box.
   
   
2. In the Format Background dialog box, make sure that the Fill panel is active in the sidebar. Then, select the Solid fill radio button, as shown highlighted in red in Figure 1.
   
   
   Figure 1: Solid fill radio button selected within the Format Background dialog box
   
   
3. Click the Color button (highlighted in blue in Figure 1, above) to open the Color drop-down gallery shown in Figure 2.
   
   
   Figure 2: Color drop-down gallery within the Format Background dialog box
   
   The options in this gallery are explained below -- you'll need to choose any one of these options for the slide background fill:
   
   
   1. Automatic: Uses the default background color of the Theme applied to the presentation.
      
      
   2. Theme Colors: Here, you can select any of the colors which are from the active Theme of the presentation. You can also select any of the 5 tints (lighter color variations) or shades (darker color variations) for any Theme color.
      
      
   3. Standard Colors: Here you can choose from any of the ten standard colors -- these ten standard colors are just choices of colors that PowerPoint believes to be widely used. You don't have to limit yourself to either the Theme colors or Standard colors, as you will learn in the next two options. Note that it's a good design idea to use Theme colors as far as possible.
      
      
   4. Recent Colors: Here, you can find the colors most recently used. If you have just launched PowerPoint and created a new presentation, this option may be entirely absent since you haven't selected any color recently!
      
      
   5. More Colors: This option is to summon the Colors dialog box, which helps you to create your own new color to use as a background fill. To learn more about how to work with the More Colors option, read our Add Solid Fills to Shapes in PowerPoint 2010 tutorial -- explore step 4E in that tutorial.
      
      
4. Choose any of the options as explained in the preceding step -- thereafter apply the selected solid color fill to your slides by clicking either:
   
   
   1. The Close button to fill selected slides in the presentation with the selected color. If you don't have multiple slides selected, the solid color will be applied to the active slide only.
      
      
   2. The Apply to All button to fill all slides in the presentation with the selected color.
      
      
   More details about the Close and Apply to All buttons can be found in our Format Slide Background in PowerPoint 2010 tutorial.
   
   
5. In Figure 3 you can see the slide background of the entire presentation filled with green solid color.
   
   
   Figure 3: Presentation with a solid fill color background
   
   
6. Remember to save your presentation often.

See Also: Solid Fills for Slide Backgrounds in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac