With an AutoShape (except for a line) or a piece of WordArt, there are three distinct areas: inside, outside, and the border between the two. You format the border with the Line tools, and you format the inside with the Fill tools. (The area outside the shape is defined by the slide background setting.)
A line, on the other hand, has only two areas: the line and the background on which it sits. To format a line, you work only with the Line tools in PowerPoint. The Fill tools are unavailable when a line is selected.
Since all drawn objects and WordArt use the Line settings, let's look at those first.
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Many people make the mistake of placing a transparent rectangle around an object when they want a border around it. This works, but it is inefficient. Because the rectangle and the object it frames are two separate objects, they move separately, so when you resize or move the object, the rectangle has to be moved and resized separately. You could group the objects, but that would be another step. A much simpler way to put a frame around an object is to simply select that object and apply a Line Color to it.
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The fast and easy way to apply line formatting is with the Drawing toolbar buttons:
Line Color: The outside border around a shape, or the line itself for a line. Click the button face to apply the currently chosen color or click the down arrow to the right of the button to open a menu.
Line Style: The number and type of smaller lines that comprise the line. It might be a single line, or two or three thin rows running parallel to one another. Clicking the button opens a menu.
Dash Style: The spacing and shape of the dashes in its line (or its quality of being solid, without dashes of any kind). Clicking the button opens a menu.
Arrow Style: The presence or absence of an arrow at one or both ends of the line, and the arrow's size and shape. Clicking the button opens a menu.
There are a couple of minor drawbacks to using the toolbar method. One is that the Line Style list contains a combination of line styles and thicknesses. If the line style you want appears there in the wrong thickness, too bad. The other is that you can't apply a different arrowhead style to each end of a line; you get either the same style at both ends or a single-end arrow.
For the dialog box method, select the drawn object, and choose Format⇨Auto-Shape. Then click the Colors and Lines tab, and make your selections in the Line area (see Figure 7-14).
Figure 7-14: Formatting a line, or the border of a shape, from the Format AutoShape dialog box.
If you are formatting a line (not a shape), the Arrow area will also be available. The options here include both a style and a size for the beginning and the end of the line. So, for example, you can select an arrowhead style and then choose how large that arrowhead will be as two separate issues.
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Which is the beginning of the line, and which is the end? When you initially draw that line, wherever you started is the beginning. If you don't remember, use trial-and-error; you have a 50% chance of being right.
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