Visio® 2007 Bible

Chapter 35. Formatting with Styles

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Working with styles

• Creating styles

• Editing styles

• Copying styles between Visio files

• Designing shapes for patterns

• Designing line patterns

• Designing line end patterns

• Designing fill patterns

• Creating custom patterns

With the introduction of the Themes feature in Visio 2007, the everyday Visio user won't have as much use for styles as in the past. So many built-in shapes are designed to work with Themes that attractive color-coordinated diagrams are yours with only a few clicks. Although some shapes don't work with Themes, they often have pre-defined formatting applied.

Styles still have a purpose in Visio 2007, although the primary audience is people who build or customize shapes for others to use. Let's say you're building a customized set of masters and you want them formatted the same way. Or you are fine-tuning a diagram and want to apply the same formatting to several shapes to indicate their behind-schedule status. Instead of applying one format command after the other, applying a style is faster and produces more consistent results.

Styles can apply as much or as little formatting as you want—from something as simple as a line weight to the gamut of line, text, and fill formatting. It's easy to apply a collection of format settings to shapes by applying the same style to them. In addition, changing the formatting for shapes formatted with styles is nothing more than redefining the style. Although Visio templates offer sets of styles ...