PowerPoint 2010: Drawing No-Fill Shapes By Default

by AJ George

Related to last week's article on changing PowerPoint's default color palette, I was asked by a reader if it was possible to set up PowerPoint so that, by default, shapes were drawn without a fill color. After tinkering around with the color palettes, I can find no way to set PowerPoint so that every time you start a new presentation the shapes are already pre-set to draw without a fill color. PowerPoint will always default to drawing with a fill color. You can, however, set up each individual presentation to do this. It is not a perfect solution, but will still save you time versus having to format every shape individually in your presentation.

1. Choose Insert > Shapes to draw the shape as you normally would.
2. Right-click the shape and select Format Shape.

The Format Shape dialog box will appear.


3. Make formatting changes as you see fit (to remove the fill color choose Fill > No Fill).
4. When you are finished, click the Close button.
5. Right-click the shape again (being sure to click on the outside lines, clicking on the center of the shape will give you a different drop-down menu) and choose Set as Default Shape.
   
   

Thereafter, any shape you draw in that presentation will follow this formatting by default (excluding lines and open shapes). Go ahead, give it a go with some other shapes. You will have to reset the shape defaults for each new presentation, but you will only have to do it once per presentation.

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About the author: AJ George is IconLogic's lead Technical Communicator and author of both "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials."

Comments

[Allen]

I am always going to PowerPoint to create a simple screen shot with a red box highlighting certain areas. I used the suggestion above and have been using a presentation as a template when I want to do this.

Today I learned that I can create a new default theme instead. Now I don't have to remember to open the presentation.

Here are the articles I used beside this one. Hope this helps.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint-help/set-new-formatting-defaults-for-a-shape-or-text-box-HA010244963.aspx

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint-help/change-the-default-theme-HA010204550.aspx?CTT=5&origin=HA010244963

[Ole Quistgaard]

I simply cannot get that to work in PowerPoint 2010
First I used hours to learn that special short right click to get the right click up. (By default you get a "Move here" "Copy here". You need a special short right click (took me about one hour to learn - shame on you PowerPoint development team making such poor usability)
Now I can get the menu up but the storing of default does not work. Even within an open presentation. The dfault does not change. For some reason we have set our company templates to no border line on lines which means that you cannot see the line you are drawing. Can anybody help me on this

[AJ]

Hi Ole,

I'm a little confused about what you mean by a "special short right click."

Otherwise, I have a suggestion for you about your default line problem. I was unable to replicate the problem on my system, but I did some research to find other people with similar problems. Try this:
1.From the ribbon, choose Design > Themes > Colors.
2. From the Colors drop-down menu, select a different color set. Alternately, select Create New Theme Colors and make your own theme. If you are going to be using a corporate color scheme, focus on changing the color for "Accent 1" and see if that brings back by your border lines.

If you could send me a copy of one of your presentations that uses the template with no line color so I could check it out myself and write an article on the problem for our readers, that would be great!