Add Pattern Fills to AutoShapes in PowerPoint 2003 and 2002 for Windows
Add pattern fills to AutoShapes in PowerPoint 2003 and 2002 for Windows.
Author:Geetesh Bajaj
Product/Version: PowerPoint 2003 and 2002 for Windows
OS: Windows XP, Vista, or 7
In other tutorials in this series, we covered
solid
fills, gradient fills and
texture fills in PowerPoint 2003 and previous versions. In
this tutorial page, we will explore the Pattern Fills. Patterns in PowerPoint are two-color designs comprising patterns like lines,
dots, dashes and checks. PowerPoint includes 48 patterns such with names like plaid, weaves, shingle and zig zag. If you want to see a sample
presentation showing Pattern Fills in PowerPoint, scroll down to the bottom of this page.
Follow these steps to change or apply a Pattern Fill to an AutoShape:
Select the AutoShape 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, users can change the slide layout to
Blank by selecting Format | Slide Layout, and then choose the Blank layout in the
resultant Task Pane.
You will find the rectangle AutoShape option in the Drawing toolbar located below the
PowerPoint interface. Select this option, and click once on the blank slide to
place a rectangle AutoShape.
Select the AutoShape, and choose the Format | AutoShape option, as shown in Figure 1, or
double click the AutoShape.
Figure 1: AutoShape option to be selected
Either way, this opens the Format AutoShape dialog box that you can see in Figure 2. Note that this is a
multi-tabbed dialog box, and all the options we need can be found in the Colors and Lines tab (again, see
Figure 2).
Figure 2: Colors and Lines tab within the Format AutoShape
In the Fill area, click the downward arrow next to the Color option, and choose Fill Effects,
as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Fill Effects
This summons the Fill Effects dialog box that you can see in Figure 4. This dialog box has four tabs:
Gradient,
Texture, Pattern and
Picture, select the Pattern tab (again,
refer to Figure 4).
Figure 4: Pattern tab of the Fill Effects dialog box
Choose any of the pattern styles. Figure 4 shows that we selected the first pattern available, this one is named 5%, probably
because the dots in this pattern comprise 5% of the total pattern area. Similarly, there are patterns all the way from 5% to 90%! Other pattern names
are more intuitive than these ones, they are called Sphere, Wave, etc.
Whichever pattern you choose, you can then choose the foreground and background colors for the pattern. Both of these have downward arrows next to
them that work in the same way as you would choose a solid
color. If you don't want to change the foreground and background colors, and accept the default color values
that PowerPoint uses, that's OK too.
Once the pattern is selected, click OK to apply the pattern to the AutoShape, and get back to the
Format AutoShape dialog box. Thereafter, click OK again to get back to your slide and AutoShape.
You get 8 shape types plus lines as part of this Organic Shapes collection. Each of these 8 shape types have 10 variants. So you end up with 80
hand-drawn shape options! Again each of these 80 shapes have 12 brush stroke styles! Plus you get the lines and arrows in 12 brush stroke styles too.
Combine all variations to end up with more than 3000 possibilities.
