Excel07: where did Draw Object Fill Patterns go?

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Dick Watson - 18 Mar 2007 15:49 GMT

Did the ability to fill drawing object with patterns just go away? I see
pictures and textures, but no patterns. Losing these is a big deal for
things like engineering sketches and things that have to be faxed--where
none of the textures, say, work at all well).

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Roger Govier - 18 Mar 2007 16:47 GMT

Hi Dick

On the Ribbon>Insert>dropdown on Shapes>select shape>right click on
insert shape>Colour

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Regards

Roger Govier

> Did the ability to fill drawing object with patterns just go away? I
> see pictures and textures, but no patterns. Losing these is a big deal
> for things like engineering sketches and things that have to be
> faxed--where none of the textures, say, work at all well).

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Dick Watson - 18 Mar 2007 17:50 GMT

Yes, but Pattern fill no longer seems to be an option. ?It has Solid.
Gradient. Texture. Picture. No pattern. Word drawing still has Pattern fill.
PowerPoint appears to use the same component for drawing as Excel. No
Pattern Fill that I can find.

Pattern Fill has been around since, what, MacDraw v. 1? Perhaps it wasn't
"great looking" enough for Office 2007.

> On the Ribbon>Insert>dropdown on Shapes>select shape>right click on insert
> shape>Colour
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
>> things like engineering sketches and things that have to be faxed--where
>> none of the textures, say, work at all well).

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Bob Flanagan - 19 Mar 2007 03:51 GMT

Dick, I believe you can still add patterns, but you must do it with macro
code - that you must record from an earlier version of Excel. I have
successfully done this with column charts. If you want, contact me at
bobflanagan1nospam@yahoo.com (remove the nospam) and we can discuss further.

Bob Flanagan
Macro Systems
http://www.add-ins.com
Productivity add-ins and downloadable books on VB macros for Excel

> Did the ability to fill drawing object with patterns just go away? I see
> pictures and textures, but no patterns. Losing these is a big deal for
> things like engineering sketches and things that have to be faxed--where
> none of the textures, say, work at all well).

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Harlan Grove - 19 Mar 2007 06:58 GMT

"Bob Flanagan" <nore...@noreply.net> wrote...

>Dick, I believe you can still add patterns, but you must do it
>with macro code - that you must record from an earlier version
>of Excel. I have successfully done this with column charts.

...

If you can record it, you could write it without recording it.

So this is something the ribbon can't do.

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Dick Watson - 19 Mar 2007 11:57 GMT

It's not just the ribbon. The dialog box for Format Object can't do it,
either.

> If you can record it, you could write it without recording it.
>
> So this is something the ribbon can't do.

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Dick Watson - 19 Mar 2007 11:58 GMT

I'll look into it. Seems there ought to be an easier way...

> Dick, I believe you can still add patterns, but you must do it with macro
> code - that you must record from an earlier version of Excel. I have
> successfully done this with column charts. If you want, contact me at
> bobflanagan1nospam@yahoo.com (remove the nospam) and we can discuss
> further.

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nhebb - 20 Mar 2007 02:11 GMT

Dick,

Wow. It looks like you're right. I just did a workaround that had
better results than the original:

- Open up Paint and set the image size to 16x16, using Image >
Attributes from the Paint toolbar. (See note below).
- Zoom the image to 8x.
- Click View > Zoom > Show Grid from the menu.
- Draw a diagonal line from the top right corner to the bottom left.
(I used a gray line.)
- Save to your My Pictures folder.
- Repeat for any other patterns or directions you want.
- In Excel's Format Shape dialog, set the fill to Picture and import
the image you just created.
- Using the tiling effects, you can create much better patterns then
the previous versions of Excel.

Note: Create different sized images in Paint to vary the pitch of the
patterns.

Another workaround would be to open a file created in Excel 2003 that
contained a pattern-filled shape, then use the Format Painter tool
(wherever that is on the Ribbon). I haven't tried this, but it should
probably work.

HTH,

Nicholas Hebb
BreezeTree Software
http://www.breezetree.com

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