Add Gradient Fills to Shapes in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows
Add gradient fills to shapes in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows.
Author:Geetesh Bajaj
Product/Version: PowerPoint 2007 for Windows
OS: Microsoft Windows XP / Vista / 7
PowerPoint 2007 essentially provides four fill options:
solid,
picture, gradient, and
texture. We have already explored the first two
options; in this tutorial, we'll learn about Gradient Fills.
To see a sample presentation containing Gradient Fills in PowerPoint, scroll down to the bottom of this page.
Follow these steps to change or apply a Gradient Fill to a shape:
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 2007 users can
change the slide layout to Blank by selecting
Home tab | Layout | Blank.
Under the Home or Insert tab of the Ribbon,
choose the Shapes button to view the Shapes 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: Shapes gallery
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.
From the Drawing Tools Format tab, locate the Shape Styles group, then select the Shape Fill
button to view the Shape Fill drop-down gallery that you can see in Figure 3. From the Shape Fill
drop-down gallery choose Gradient.
Figure 3: Shape Fill gallery
This opens the Gradient sub-gallery (refer to Figure 3). Based on the
Theme applied to the open presentation or slides, the gallery provides various options:
• No Gradient: Just a solid color. This is the option you can use if you already have a shape with a
Gradient Fill that you want to restore to a shape with a solid fill.
• Light Variation: In this option gradients are formed in various directions with the default color merged with white or a
light color. These color are based on the active Theme.
• Dark Variation: Here gradients are formed in various directions with the default color merged with black or a dark color.
This default color is based on the active Theme.
• More Gradients: This option is explained in a detailed article on the
More Gradients page.
Click on any of the options explained in Step 5. Remember to save your presentation often.
Tip: If your slide has many shapes that you want to fill with the same type of gradient, or even any other fill type, select them
all before you click on any of the fill options. This lets you add or change the fill of all selected shapes at one time.
All these gears are native PowerPoint shapes. You can recolor them, add effects, and do more, all inside PowerPoint. Results which would have taken
hours to achieve now take less than a minute! Have fun using the gear graphics, and make your audience take notice! All these gears can be rotated and
resized, as required. Since they are essentially pictures, all types of edits that you can do with pictures work with them too!
