Excel Draw Perfect Shapes With Draw And Hold Gesture - Episode 2659

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This video has been published on Oct 29, 2024.
Microsoft Excel Tutorial: Draw Perfect Shapes With Draw And Hold Gesture
In this video, I'm diving into a new feature in Microsoft Excel: the Draw and Hold Gesture!
If you've ever wanted to create shapes in Excel without struggling with awkward mouse drawing, this update is for you. While the feature has been available in OneNote for a while, it’s finally made its way to Excel and PowerPoint—at least for those on the Insider’s channel. I’ll walk you through how to activate this new tool and show you what it can do!

First, if you don’t see the Draw tab in your ribbon, I’ll show you how to get it. It's just a quick right-click and then a trip to the “Customize Ribbon” menu. Once activated, you’ll have access to a variety of freeform drawing tools, including color options for each pen. But as you'll see, drawing anything with a mouse alone can be tricky, resulting in some less-than-perfect shapes.

Now here’s where things get interesting: with the Draw and Hold Gesture, you can actually draw a shape, hold the mouse, and let Excel recognize and perfect it. I’ll demonstrate how to draw squares, circles, stars, and even hearts! Once you complete the shape and hold it, you can resize or rotate it, adding a level of flexibility you usually wouldn’t expect from a simple mouse gesture.

One thing I noticed is that the shapes created with this tool differ from those made with the Insert, Shapes option. For instance, the Draw and Hold Gesture shapes appear as “Ink” items rather than traditional shapes, with some Shape Format features turned off. I discuss these differences and explore why this tool might be useful, even though traditional shape-drawing tools are still available in Excel.

I hope you enjoy this look at Excel’s new drawing capabilities! It’s great to see features from other Microsoft programs making their way to Excel. Thanks for watching, and as always, stay tuned for more Excel tips and tricks on MrExcel! If you’re on the Insider’s channel, go try out the Draw and Hold Gesture, and let me know how it works for you!

Buy Bill Jelen's latest Excel book: MrExcel 2024 Igniting Excel

Table of Contents
(0:00) Intro to Draw & Hold gesture in Excel
(0:12) Adding Draw tab to Ribbon
(0:29) Hard to draw shapes with the mouse
(0:40) Hold at the end of drawing the shape
(0:52) Resizing or rotating the shape
(1:12) Drawing Circles, Stars, Ovals, Hearts
(1:48) Constrast with Insert, Shapes
(2:22) Names for Shape versus Ink & available features
(2:44) Wrap-up

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Transcript of the video:
Hey, now you can draw perfect shapes in  Excel using the new draw and hold gesture.  This is a feature that's  previously been in OneNote.  Now in PowerPoint and Excel,  at least the Insider's channel.  You may not have the Draw  tab up here in the ribbon.  Right-click anywhere.
Customize The Ribbon.  Over here look for Draw.
It's probably unchecked.  Turn it on.
And now you have   the ability to draw freeform stuff, right?
And for each of these pens, there's usually   different colors you can choose.
But the problem with this   is you're drawing with a mouse.
And it's just going to look like horrible, right?  How are you ever going to  be able to draw a circle?  Well, they've added this  new Draw And Hold gesture.  Okay, so here I'm going to try and draw a square.
You have to draw it in one fluid motion.  And when you close, Hold.
And they'll recognize what   you were trying to draw and draw it.
Now this next part is a little tough to do.  Don't let go of the mouse!
If you can keep holding.  We're now in this special mode where you  can resize by dragging in or dragging out.  Or rotate the shape.
Alright?  So for me it was really hard - I  was so happy to have gotten the   perfect shape, I always let go of the mouse.
But if you can get the hang of holding on,   then you can pull it off.
Let's try a few other things.  Let's try a circle.
Here's the star – Nice!  An oval.
It's hard to get a heart.  I can't quite figure out how to draw a  heart that they will recognize with a heart.  Oh, there we go.
Finally got it.  Triangle.
It's interesting.  I don't know.
Clearly not created for Excel, but it's nice that   since they had it that they brought it to Excel.
Now one question.  Why did they add this when we've  already had the ability back here   on the Insert tab to draw a lot of these shapes?
So we come here to Insert Shapes and if we needed   a five point star, there it is.
We can draw it any size.  And I guess there is the hassle if  you have to do Shape Fill, No Fill.  And then Shape Outline, make  the weight a little bit thicker.  So I guess you avoid all of that hassle here.
Maybe that's what it is.  It's interesting.
If I look at this shape, it has the   name of “Star, Five Points, 38”th shape.
And these are the items that are   on the Shape Format.
When I click the one that   was drawn with the Draw tab.
It's called Ink 27.  And a lot of the features seem to be  turned off here on Shape Format, right?  So it's definitely a different thing than a shape.
But there's probably some cool stuff that you   can do using this new draw and hold gesture.
Well, hey, I want to thank you for stopping by.  We'll see you next time for  another netcast from MrExcel.
 

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