For instance, take a look at the colorful painting to the right. This painting is basically row after row of different patterns! Patterns show up in all kinds of art, from to tribal folk arts from various cultures around the world.

You can see more examples of. When you look at patterns, like the ones in the painting on the right, you may (falsely) assume they are so complex that you could never draw them on your own - let alone come up with your own similar designs Well, get out your pencil cause I'm gonna show you how to do it! By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to draw a pattern like this in no time.

Pattern fill for shapes is another feature of the Office 2003 drawing tools that is now gone! The other one I used all the time was snap to grid with drawing tools! With the new version I can't make many of the technical presentation type drawings I used to!

For example, I can no longer make a 'square wave' shape because of the lack of snap-to on a grid! You don't say, but I'm assuming you've installed 2007? Snap-to and the grid are still there. Right-click in an area of the slide that contains no shapes, or just off the slide to be certain and choose 'Grid and Guides'. Back in comfortable territory now?

But pattern fills are indeed gone. If you still have PPT 2003 or access to it, you can set a slide up at, say, 1'x1' page size, fill it with one of the pattern fills, then export as WMF or EMF. You can then use those as picture fills in 2007. I've written a little macro that'll automatically generate a little WMF file of each available patterned fill.

If you're not comfy with using VBA, wait a bit and visit: No more Pattern Fills in PowerPoint 2007 I'll post a link to a zip file with all of the pattern fills sample WMF files. Sub MakeFillPatterns ' Start by opening a new blank presentation ' Then run this Dim oSh As Shape Dim x As Long Dim sOutputFolder As String On Error GoTo ErrorHandler ' edit this to the slash-terminated path to the folder where you want the files created ' the folder MUST exist or you'll get an error and the macro won't work sOutputFolder = 'c: temp ' With ActivePresentation.PageSetup.SlideHeight = 72.PageSetup.SlideWidth = 72 Set oSh =.Slides(1).Shapes.AddShape(msoShapeRectangle, 0, 0, 72, 72) With oSh ' we don't want the outline visible.

It'll spoil the pattern.Line.Visible = msoFalse.Fill.Transparency = 0#.Fill.Visible = msoTrue ' This is set to use foreground and background scheme colors. In article, Unhappy wrote: Thanks Steve Rindsberg.

Patterns For Shape Fillets

I got to the point of creating the macro, but when I run it, it only creates a single pattern (little sparse dots). No, that's just the last pattern it creates. It also creates WMF files of each pattern that PPT is able to understand and saves them in the directory the macro calls for (C: Temp, unless you've changed it) To use them, you'd use the formatting dialog, choose a Picture or Pattern fill, click From File and pick one of the patterns. What I need to find out is how to link all the WFM files contained in the ZIP folder so that I can see all the options.

I must be missing something real simple. Thanks I'm not sure what you mean by 'link' - Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP PPT FAQ: PPTools: Perot@discussions.microsoft.com Hercule Perot, 13:42 น. Lucy, Thank you so very much for your pointers, unfortunately I do very little in black and white so this is pretty much useless. Do you have a way (without VB coding) that I can dynamically change fill patter color?

In addition to that, I can no longer edit ANY of my legacy PPT content as 75%+ uses pattern fills. My clients usually have specific colors to be aligned with their branding and I can no longer build upon my vast collection of pre-existing work. Think about how many people are having these problems? This is crazy! In general, I have found that most of the commands that I could get to with one click now require multiple clicks. I did most of my work with key-strokes and most of the commands have change (why in the world.?).

My productivity has tanked as much of my time is spent hunting down how to do something that was simple in the past. 'Lucy Thomson' wrote: Hi Hercule The community has come up with some workarounds since this discussion: No more Pattern Fills in PowerPoint 2007 I understand your frustration with moving to Vista & Office '07 but perhaps if you tell us about specific issues you are having (with Office, not Vista) we could help.

Lucy - Lucy Thomson PowerPoint MVP MOS Master Instructor Lucy Thomson, 17:27 น. Hi Are you using Excel charts or MS Graph charts? If you are using Excel Andy Pope's add-in should help: and if you are using MS Graph then don't convert them when prompted by PowerPoint '07 and you still have pattern fills. The Excel team have a blog post about pattern-fills here: I'm afraid I don't have a great deal of experience with moving chart-heavy ppts from '03 to '07 but others here do so they may have more tips for you. And I can certainly see why you would be frustrated - lets hope MS are listening. My experience with using keystrokes is that the old ones still work (which helped a great deal in my migration!) - did you have many that you had added yourself as I'm not sure these will work? You may want to look at this: And be aware that pressing 'alt' activates the 'new' set of shortcuts.

Lucy - Lucy Thomson PowerPoint MVP MOS Master Instructor 'Hercule Perot' wrote in message news:3A1AEE1A-9A34-412C-8CE4-AD874623E91B@microsoft.com. Hercule Perot, 19:29 น. Lucy, The graphics that I am using area being created with shapes. In one case today it was to create a Gantt chart and in the other it was a geographic map of shapes. Group and ungroup was Ctrl-Shft-G / Ctrl-Shft-H now it's Ctrl-G / Ctrl-Shft-G.

To make matters worse, what was group is now ungroup. Ctrl-O used to open the format menu, now it's file open. Format painter used to be Ctrl-Shft-C which now is nothing. And let's not start on how Excel operates completely differently then the rest of the office suite (alt-F4 closes all rather than just the current file, and ctrl- and Ctrl- do not reduce and increase font size). I only use the standard keystrokes. (BTW, thanks for taking the time to reply to me:-) ) 'Lucy Thomson' wrote: Hi Are you using Excel charts or MS Graph charts? If you are using Excel Andy Pope's add-in should help: and if you are using MS Graph then don't convert them when prompted by PowerPoint '07 and you still have pattern fills.

The Excel team have a blog post about pattern-fills here: I'm afraid I don't have a great deal of experience with moving chart-heavy ppts from '03 to '07 but others here do so they may have more tips for you. And I can certainly see why you would be frustrated - lets hope MS are listening. My experience with using keystrokes is that the old ones still work (which helped a great deal in my migration!) - did you have many that you had added yourself as I'm not sure these will work? You may want to look at this: And be aware that pressing 'alt' activates the 'new' set of shortcuts. Lucy - Lucy Thomson PowerPoint MVP MOS Master Instructor Lucy Thomson, 19:53 น. 'Hercule Perot' wrote in message news:9DCC6930-1210-4DFC-B6BD-E4DFBD2C6C77@microsoft.com.

LucyHerculeThe graphics that I am using area being created with shapes. In one case today it was to create a Gantt chart and in the other it was a geographic map of shapes. Ahhh, shapes.

Would making the shapes in Word then copy/paste work for you? Pattern fills are still around in Word '07.

Or creating pictures of your shape pattern fills and then using the picture fill command? I've done a wee bit of testing and it seems old '03 shapes with pattern fill can be resized & converted to other shapes in '07 (though not re-coloured) - could that work for you? I create Gantts in Excel (saves me having to buy/learn Project): Group and ungroup was Ctrl-Shft-G / Ctrl-Shft-H now it's Ctrl-G / Ctrl-Shft-G. Must admit I didn't know that original one as I'm a button gal for group/ungroup - I suppose as I use the mouse to select so just hang on to it. To make matters worse, what was group is now ungroup. Ctrl-O used to open the format menu, now it's file open. AFAIK Ctrl+O has always opened the open dialogue accross the Office suite Format painter used to be Ctrl-Shft-C which now is nothing.

My only suggestion is to add it to the QAT then you can use Alt + whatever '07 tells you. Personally I prefer pick up style & apply style commands to format painter in PPT. And let's not start on how Excel operates completely differently then the rest of the office suite (alt-F4 closes all rather than just the current file, and ctrl- and Ctrl- do not reduce and increase font size).

I only use the standard keystrokes. I always used Ctrl+W to close files and that still works. In general, I guess I didn't use as many keyboard shortcuts as I thought I did;-) (BTW, thanks for taking the time to reply to me:-) ) Just trying to ease the pain in any way I can:-) Lucy JR, 11:14 น.

Lucy, Hercule said it all when he replied to your (this) post. Years and years of hand-eye-muscle coordination and knowning EXACTLY how to fly through building a presentation in at least three previous versions of powerpoint are gone with this new version. Multiple clicks looking for vanished tools (the pattern part is second only by the absence - well, so far - of being able to set a default font for all new text box items). This is sure frustrating for an old 'powerpoint ranger'. Lots and lots of lost productivity. Lucy Thomson, 17:30 น.

Hi JR I hear you! My pet peeve that still makes me swear out loud (good thing I work alone) is moving the little view buttons from the left hand corner to the right hand corner for.absolutely no reason at all. I use them all the time to get into the master (holding shift when you click the 3 buttons changes what they do). And as I still use '03 and '07 it gets me.every single time. Tips for moving to 2007: Download the 'where have all the commands gone' spreadsheet (use ctrl+f to search the workbook for the command you are after): Look at Echo's site to discover all the new & missing things in 2007: Set up your Quick Access Toolbar with all your fav buttons (at the mo I have the alignment/distribute buttons up there, print preview, pick up/apply style eye dropper, properties, insert rectangle) Take deep breaths & count to ten often;-) I know none of that is going to solve all your issues but it may help ease some of the pain - after all we have to use what we're given.

Lucy - Lucy Thomson PowerPoint MVP MOS Master Instructor 'JR' wrote in message news:899CEB09-9CCC-4599-97AF-B8E3650BA99A@microsoft.com. FP 31/8/2009, 4:50 น. Where is the official Microsoft comment on this? I have spent hours looking for the pattern control and as a last result decided to search the web for the answer.

In the interim I have found I can take 2003 objects with pattern fills and use paint brush to apply them in 2007 but its a time consuming work around and may not be stable. Its difficult to believe that MS would remove this facility. Pattern fills are an essential feature of engineering sketches. Without patterns PowerPoint becomes an even more second rate product. A friend successfully uses Autosketch and then converts the drawings to pdf's for presenations. That may be the way to go as it works reasonably well. I hear others are going to open office but I am not sure what disadvanatges that will have.

Jean-Pierre Forestier MVP 31/8/2009, 5:36 น. We have a free addin to put pattern fills back ONLY B&W and won't work in graphs John 'Jean-Pierre Forestier MVP' wrote in message news:uT6XTejKKHA.4928@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl. Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature database 4385 (20090831) The message was checked by ESET Smart Security. Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature database 4385 (20090831) The message was checked by ESET Smart Security. Jean-Pierre Forestier MVP 31/8/2009, 12:42 น.