Excel Autoshapes

February 05, 2002 - by Bill Jelen

MrExcel is so impressed with the ease of use of this new freebie from Microsoft, it becomes this week's Excel tip.

(Excel 97 only) Free Drawing 98 application from Microsoft to jazz up the drawing toolbar with 139 easy to use symbols for Excel.

After installing this application from the Microsoft web site, you will be able to easily add cool symbols of any size and color to Excel, Word and other Office applications.

In Excel, select Insert, Picture, Autoshapes from the menu. You will be presented with an Autoshape toolbar with shapes organized into 7 categories: lines, connectors, basic shapes, block arrows, flowchart, stars and banners, and callouts. Select any shape, then click and drag to insert the shape into your worksheet.

To format the shape with cool colors or textures, simply right-click the shape, and pick Format Auto Shape. Select the "Fill" dropdown box and click either "More Colors" or "Fill Effects". Use the "texture" tab on the fill effects dialog to pick from several cool textures.

If you have the Office Valupack, you can find other textures in the \valupack\textures directory of the CD.