Formatting Shapes and Text
Now that you’re learned how to manipulate Visio Shapes to become the building blocks for your Visio drawing, we’re going to learn how to format a shape to look the way you want it to. It’s very easy to create a simple black and white drawing in Visio, but if you want something that really stands out for a presentation or print out, you will need to format your shapes by adding color, formatting the borders and lines, and formatting the connectors. These small formatting details will help you create a print ready Visio drawing that your co-workers will be envious of.
Format Shape Toolbar
There is a handy toolbar to help your format a shape.
This gives you a quick access to a couple of formatting buttons to format the shapes in your drawing.
Shape Fill Color & Patterns
There are a couple of ways to access the shape fill color and patterns.
- Select the shape you want to format. Click the arrow on the right of the Fill Pattern (
) button on the toolbar. - Right-click on the icon and select Format and then Fill.
- The Fill Options dialog box opens.
- Select your options such as color, patten, shadow, transparency and then click OK.
These options allow you change the color and fill of shapes to spice up your drawing.
Shape Line Formatting
The lines in your shape can be formatted to look however you wish from rounded corners to changing the color of the line to how the line is presented. If you think back to our lesson involving the brainstorming diagram, you will remember we formatted the rectangle to have rounded corners and a purple color. There are other options that you can select when formatting the line.
Select the object you’d like to format the line for, then select the Format menu and then select Line.
There are a number of options for formatting a line. You can change the pattern, weight (width of the line), color, cap, transparency. You can set what is at the beginning or ending of a line, e.g. an arrow or bullet (45 different options). Rounded corners are for squares and such that have corners.
There are many options you can choose to format a line around a shape.
Shape Shadow Effects
You can add shadow effects to help shapes stand out from the page.
Select the shape you’d like to add shadow effects to. Click on the Format menu. Select Shadow, the Shadow dialog box opens.
The first step is to select a style of shadow. There are a number of shadows available:
Once you’ve selected a shadow style, you can alter it to meet your needs. Once you’re finished, click OK.
In the Next Section
In the next section of this free Microsoft Visio tutorial, you will learn how to manage pages.
