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Whenever a new shape is inserted on a slide in PowerPoint 2010, it is filled with a solid color by default (or something else depending on the Theme your presentation is based on). Other than a solid fill type, PowerPoint 2010 provides several more options that let you fill a shape with a picture, a gradient, a pattern, or a texture -- and I shall explore these other fill options in subsequent tutorials. In this tutorial, I'll show you how you can work with solid color fills.

Follow these steps to change the fill to a solid color of your choice:

1. Select the shape that you want to change the fill for. Alternatively, if you just want to follow this tutorial step-by-step, launch PowerPoint. Most of the time, PowerPoint will open with a new slide in a presentation -- PowerPoint 2010 users can change the slide layout to Blank by selecting the Home tab | Layout | Blank.
   
   
2. Within the Home or Insert tab of the Ribbon, click the Shapes button to access the Shapes gallery that you can see in Figure 1. Select any shape, and then either drag and draw, or click once on the blank slide to place an instance of the shape (I used a heart shape).
   
   
   Figure 1: Shapes gallery
   
   
3. Select the shape so that the Ribbon area now shows the Drawing Tools Format tab, as shown in Figure 2. Activate this Ribbon tab by clicking on it.
   
   
   Figure 2: Drawing Tools Format tab of the Ribbon
   
   
   Note: The Drawing Tools Format tab is a contextual tab, These tabs are special tabs in the Ribbon that are not visible all the time -- they only make an appearance when you are working with a particular slide object which can be edited using special options.
   
   
4. Within the Drawing Tools Format tab, locate the Shape Styles group. Then select the Shape Fill option to view the Shape Fill dropdown gallery that you can see in Figure 3.
   
   
   Figure 3: Shape Fill gallery
   
   The options in this gallery are explained below -- you'll need to choose any one of these options for the fill:
   
   
   1. 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 or shades for any Theme color. Learn more about Themes here..
      
      
   2. 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 I'll show you in the next options, although it's a good design idea to use Theme colors as far as possible.
      
      
   3. Recent Colors: Here you can find the colors most recently used. If you have just launched PowerPoint and created a new presentation, the Recent Colors option may be entirely absent since you haven't selected any color recently!
      
      
   4. No Fill: Choose this option to remove any fill from the selected shape.
      
      
   5. More Fill Colors: This option is to summon the Colors dialog box as shown in Figure 4. This dialog box has two tabs: Standard and Custom -- first select the Standard tab (again, refer to Figure 4).
      
      
      Figure 4: Standard tab of the Colors dialog box
      
      This tab offers 127 colors in a honeycomb style palette, 14 gray shades, black and white. You can even change the transparency value of the selected color in the Transparency slider below. If you want more color choices, then select the Custom tab of the same dialog box, as shown in Figure 5.
      
      
      Figure 5: Custom tab of the Colors dialog box
      
      In this tab, you can chose any color from the spectrum and later adjust the selected color's luminosity with the slider on the right. You can even enter specific values of RGB and HSL to create a specific color -- all these combinations provide 16 million color choices!
      
      Again, you can even change the transparency value of the selected color in the Transparency slider below.
      
      Choose any color and click OK to apply it.
      
      
   6. Picture: This option allows to use a picture as a fill for a shape -- more info here.
      
      
   7. Gradient: With this option, you can apply a gradient as a fill for a shape -- more info here.
      
      
   8. Texture: Use this option to apply a texture as a fill for a shape -- more info here.
      

5. Choose any color from the Theme Colors (or its shades and tints), Standard Color, Recent Color, or from More Colors.
   
   
6. Remember to save your presentation often.

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