Shape Styles

Quick reference

• 00:04 Let's talk about changing the style of the shapes and of the entire diagram.
• 00:10 Now, I'm going to show you something that's called preview mode.
• 00:13 So I want to make sure that preview mode is on on your version of Visio as well.
• 00:17 So I'll click on File, and I'll pick on Options > File Options.
• 00:23 And then over here,
• 00:24 I'm going to make sure that this is checked where it says enable Live Preview.
• 00:29 So notice how I have that checked.
• 00:31 And I'll click on OK.
• 00:33 Now here's a quick way to change the style and the look of the entire diagram.
• 00:39 I'm going to click on the Design menu up top.
• 00:42 And then notice how we have these themes.
• 00:45 So if you click on the pulldown for the themes, just move your mouse across those,
• 00:49 and you can see how that's changing all of the shapes.
• 00:52 So when we use the themes, it changes the entire diagram as you can see.
• 00:58 Now, let's say I pick one of those themes.
• 01:02 Then if you follow my mouse over to the right and click on the pulldown for
• 01:05 the variants, then you can pick the color scheme for that theme.
• 01:10 You can change different effects.
• 01:13 You could change even the connectors, and
• 01:15 there's different things we can change about that.
• 01:17 So you pick on the design menu, and then you pick one of these themes.
• 01:22 All right, and then you can see how, when I move my mouse across those,
• 01:26 then that preview mode kicks in.
• 01:28 Once you pick that theme, then you come over here to the variants.
• 01:32 And then you can pick on the color scheme, the effects, and the connector.
• 01:36 So you have a lot of variation there.
• 01:40 Now, let's talk about each individual shape.
• 01:42 I'm going to go ahead and click on this shape.
• 01:45 Then we're going to pick on the Home menu up top, Home.
• 01:49 And then we're going to come up here.
• 01:51 Now, first of all, there's some quick styles.
• 01:53 So these are preset styles.
• 01:55 And then there's a bunch of this.
• 01:57 So notice as I move my mouse across those,
• 02:00 then that preview mode is kicking in again, right.
• 02:02 So I do like that preview mode.
• 02:04 Now, if you wanted to go further than that, you can change the fill color.
• 02:09 I could pick on the fill color, and again, the preview mode is kicking in.
• 02:14 Now, the line is really the border color.
• 02:17 So if I move my mouse around these, notice that the border color is changing.
• 02:23 So then you can even change, the weight means the thickness of the border.
• 02:28 I can make it lines or dashes.
• 02:30 I can make it arrows, you know.
• 02:32 So this really gives you a lot to experiment with
• 02:36 as far as changing the shapes.
• 02:38 So we can click on that shape on the Home menu, you can pick from the quick styles.
• 02:44 And then just move your mouse across these and see if any of those can work for you.
• 02:49 Or if you get really specific, I can click on that pull down where it says fill, and
• 02:53 then you can pick up your own fill color, that will be the background color.
• 02:58 The line is the border of that shape.
• 03:01 And then pretty soon we'll talk about what the effects are.
• 03:04 There's even special effects, and we'll talk about that in the next section.
• 03:08 Now, let me show you how you can go even further with a shape.
• 03:12 I'm going to right click on that shape, and then I can pick on format shape.
• 03:18 This is going to open up a window on the right-hand side
• 03:21 from which you can go a lot further.
• 03:23 So here is a place I can change the fill or the line.
• 03:28 Then in this case, I'll pick on this next icon, and
• 03:31 that's going to be some of those effects.
• 03:34 And then I'll pick on this icon that's talking about the title and
• 03:37 the description.
• 03:38 So I can use the Home menu, and you'll see the shape styles over here.
• 03:44 Or another way you can do it is you can right click on that shape and
• 03:48 pick on format shape.
• 03:49 And then you get the window over here that has many of the same choices.
• 03:55 So for example, let's go ahead and I'm going to pick on the Home menu, and
• 04:00 I'll pick on the quick style, and I'm not really happy with any of those.
• 04:05 Let's go with the fill over here.
• 04:07 And I'll pick on the red.
• 04:09 Or how about this one looks a little bit,
• 04:12 this one is a little bit too bright in my opinion.
• 04:14 But I went with this one.
• 04:15 And then maybe for that I'd like to have a black border around that.
• 04:20 So I'll pick on the word line and then I'll pick on black.
• 04:23 And you know what, I like to make that a thicker line.
• 04:26 So I'll pick on black there, then I'll pick on line again,
• 04:29 I'll pick on the word weight.
• 04:31 And then let's see what these look like.
• 04:33 This one's not bad.
• 04:35 So you can see each one is going to make that line a little bit thicker.
• 04:39 Good, so now we have the black border, the red fill, and the white text.
• 04:46 So that would be a great example of changing the style for each shape.

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