Using PowerPoint, it is quite easy to create graphic objects and fill them with color.

To create a graphic and fill with color

1. Open a PowerPoint presentation.



2. Navigate to the desired slide or create a new one.



3. Create a drawing object as desired. Then, select the object.



4. On the Format menu, click Colors and Lines.



5. Under Fill, select the desired color.



6. Under Line, select the desired color.



7. Click OK.

Often, however, you create presentations from existing ones. This means you may inherit graphics that you would like to use in your updated version of the presentations, but they may need tweaking. Consider the following example:

This graphic works just fine on this slide. However, let's assume that you inherit this presentation and want to use this slide in an updated version of the presentation. You need to change the template and doing so causes problems. Consider the following example:

When you update the presentation with the new template, this is what the graphic (chart) looks like. Note that you cannot read the text on the axes. In the original presentation, the background of this object was probably set to "Transparent" (without any specified fill or line color). This graphic worked correctly in the first version (it carried a white background and black text). However, the new black background makes the text unreadable. To correct this problem, you follow the steps below.

To change the fill color of an existing graphic object

1. Open a PowerPoint presentation and navigate to the desired slide.



2. Select the object to change.



3. On the Format menu, click Colors and Lines.



4. Under Fill, select the desired color. (In this case, you would probably select white because you know that the text in the original chart is black.)



5. Under Line, select the desired color.



6. Click OK.