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Add Solid Fills to Shapes in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac

Author: Geetesh Bajaj

Product/Version: Microsoft PowerPoint 2011
OS: Mac OS X

Date Created: July 25th 2011
Last Updated: July 25th 2011

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Excerpt/Capsule: Learn how to add solid fill to selected shapes in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

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Whenever a new shape is inserted on a slide in PowerPoint 2011, it is filled with blueish white gradient fill by default (or something else depending on the Theme of your presentation). Other than a gradient fill type, PowerPoint 2011 provides you with different fill types such as solid color fill, picture fill or a texture fill – in this tutorial, you will learn how to work with solid color fills for shapes:

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. You will see the Presentation Gallery which allows you to set all attributes of your new presentation, such as a preset Theme or template. Make selections or just click Cancel in this gallery to open a blank presentation with a new slide -- PowerPoint 2011 users can change the slide layout of this slide to Blank by selecting Layout | Blank within the Home tab of the Ribbon.
   
   
2. Within the Home tab of the Ribbon, locate the Insert group and click the Shape button to access the Shape gallery with different types of shape options that you can see in Figure 1. Select any shape option to access the related submenu, select the shape you prefer (we selected the Teardrop shape, as you can see in Figure 1).
   
   
   Figure 1: Shape gallery
   
   
3. Click and drag on the slide to insert the shape, or click once on the blank slide to place an instance of the shape. Select and double click the inserted shape to activate the Format tab of the Ribbon, as shown in Figure 2 (highlighted in red).
   
   
   Figure 2: Format tab of the Ribbon activated
   
   
   Note: 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 these options.
   
   
4. Within the Format tab, locate the Shape Styles group. Then click the downward arrow next to the Fill button to view the Fill drop-down gallery that you can see in Figure 3.
   
   
   Figure 3: Fill gallery
   
   The options in this gallery are explained below -- you'll need to choose any of these options for the fill:
   
   1. No Fill: Choose this option to remove any fill from the selected shape.
      
      
   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 or shades for any Theme color. Learn more about Themes here.
      
      
   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'll learn in the next options, although 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, the Recent Colors option may be entirely absent since you haven't selected any color recently!
      
      
   5. More Colors: This option is to summon the Mac OS X Color picker, as shown in Figure 4.
      
      
      Figure 4: Mac OS X Color picker
      
      In this Color picker, you can chose any color from the wheel. Thereafter adjust the selected color's luminosity within the long, thin slider on the right. Once you are happy with the color attained, you click OK to get back to your slide.
      
      If you want to reduce the transparency of the fill, use the Transparency slider that you can find within the Shape Styles group of Format tab (highlighted in blue in Figure 2 above).
      
      
   6. Fill Effects: This opens the Format Shape dialog box as shown in Figure 5. This dialog box includes almost all possible shape editing options in addition to the options to use texture, gradient or a picture as a fill for the selected shape. We will learn about them in our subsequent tutorials.
      
      
      Figure 5: Format Shape dialog box with Fill panel selected
5. Choose any color from the Theme Colors (or its shades and tints), Standard Colors, Recent Colors, or from More Colors. In all cases, you end up with a solid color fill.
   
   
6. Remember to save your presentation often.