Applying Solid or Semi-Transparent Fills
The default fill for a drawn shape is the fifth color in the active color scheme, but you can change it to any other color in the scheme, any specific solid color, or any of a variety of fill effects.
Let's look first at the solid color options. The easiest method is to select the shape and then open the menu for the Fill Color button on the Drawing toolbar, as shown in Figure 7-15. The top row of colored squares is the color scheme colors. The second row (if present) shows squares for any other colors you have already used in this presentation. No Fill makes it transparent, while Automatic resets the fill to the default (the fifth color in the active color scheme).
Figure 7-15: The Fill Color button offers a variety of colors on its menu.
A fill applied from the Fill Color button is completely non-transparent; it has 0% transparency set. That means that the shape completely obscures whatever is behind it. As I mentioned in Chapter 5, you can apply transparency to an object (you did it for a text box in Chapter 5) so that whatever is behind it shows through. Transparency is a slider that goes from 0% to 100%.
To set transparency, use the dialog box method. Select the object, choose Format⇨AutoShape, and then use the Transparency slider on the Colors and Lines tab (see Figure 5-14; it's the same thing as with text box transparency.) You can also access transparency settings by choosing More Fill Colors from the Fill button's drop-down list; the dialog box that appears has a Transparency slider in it.
Figure 7-16: Control the transparency of the fill from the Colors and Lines tab.
Figure 7-17: Transparency examples for an AutoShape.