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Whenever you add a new shape to a PowerPoint slide, it is filled with a solid color by default. Most of the time, you may leave that unaltered, but it's easy to remove any fill so that your shape only has an outline without a fill.

In this tutorial, I'll show you how you can remove the fill from a shape in PowerPoint 2007 -- a similar tutorial is also available on No Fill in PowerPoint 2003:

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 -- Most of the time, PowerPoint will open with a new slide in a presentation -- PowerPoint 2007 users can change the slide layout to Blank by selecting Home tab | Layout | Blank.
   
   
2. Under the Home or Insert tab of the Ribbon, choose the Shapes button to view the Shape gallery that you can see in Figure 1. Select the rectangle (or any other shape), and then either drag and draw, or click once on the blank slide to place an instance of the shape.
   
   
   Figure 1: Shape gallery
   
   
3. Select the shape so that the Ribbon area now shows the Drawing Tools Format, as shown in Figure 2. Activate this Ribbon tab.
   
   
   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. From 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. Choose the No Fill option.
   
   
   Figure 3: No Fill
   
   
5. Remember to save your presentation often.
   

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