Filling Shapes with Pictures

Excel allows you to format the appearance of the Shapes you place in a worksheet. If you display the Format Shape dialog box, you can change all sorts of colors, lines, fills, fonts, and other attributes of the AutoShape. One really nifty formatting feature is to place a picture within a Shape. Follow these steps:

1. Create your Shape as you normally would.
2. Right-click the Shape. Excel displays a Context menu for the Shape.
3. Choose Format Shape from the Context menu. Excel displays the Format Shape dialog box. (If Format Shape was not one of the options from the Context menu, then you didn't right-click the Shape itself in step 2. Make sure that you right-click one of the lines that make up the Shape.)
4. Make sure Fill is selected at the left of the dialog box.
5. Click the Picture or Texture Fill radio button. The options in the dialog box change to reflect your choice, and the name of the dialog box changes from Format Shape to Format Picture. (Click here to see a related figure.)
6. Use the controls in the dialog box to select a picture you want in the Shape.
7. Click Close.

The picture you selected in step 6 should now appear in the background of the Shape. In most cases the Shape looks like a "mask" over the picture, which is a nice effect. You should also use this technique sparingly, as each picture you place in a Shape can greatly increase the size of your workbook.