No fill patterns for charts or cells?

[btr]

I'm used to using fill patterns (like diagonal lines, bricks, etc) rather than fill colors in my charts. Patterns show up nicely in B+W or grey scale printing and since most of my clients don't have color printers, I use only patterns. But I can't seem to find them anywhere in Excel 2008 -- colors, gradients, pictures and textures, yes, but none of these present a pattern choice. Since to a grey-scale printer most colors look pretty such the same, this is no small problem for me. Can anyone direct me on this? Thanks.

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi,

The ability to display patterns is still in Excel (for backwards
compatibility)..

My guess is that the dialog box is still lurking in Excel 2008 and that you
could invoke its appearance using AppleScript.

If Visual Basic for Applications were still available you would need just
one line of code:
Application.Dialogs(xlDialogPatterns).Show

There¹s probably a way to put this line of code into AppleScript. To do that
all you need to do is to learn how to do some things in AppleScript, and
then read and understand the information in this document:
http://www.mactech.com/vba-transition-guide/

If you think it would be nice to be able to have visual basic returned to
Excel so that you could easily accomplish tasks like this then let Microsoft
know by sending a note to them here:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/suggestions.mspx?product=excel

I tried this little applescript, but it did not work:

tell application "Microsoft Excel"
Application.Dialogs(xlDialogPatterns).Show
end tell

If you figure it out, please post back.

Thanks.

-Jim

I'm used to using fill patterns (like diagonal lines, bricks, etc) rather than
fill colors in my charts. Patterns show up nicely in B+W or grey scale
printing and since most of my clients don't have color printers, I use only
patterns. But I can't seem to find them anywhere in Excel 2008 -- colors,
gradients, pictures and textures, yes, but none of these present a pattern
choice. Since to a grey-scale printer most colors look pretty such the same,
this is no small problem for me. Can anyone direct me on this? Thanks.

--
Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

MVPs are not Microsoft Employees
MVP info

 

[Mauricio]

I am not sure I understand. Why should patterns be related to VBA? How are they different from colors, or textures for that matter? Excel 2008 allows you to fill areas or chart bars with textures - aren't patterns just a different type of texture?

 

[CyberTaz]

I'm a bit baffled here - In Excel 2008 fill patterns are right where they
were in 2004: Format> Cells - Pattern, drop-down list beneath the color
swatches... at least for cells. Are you saying they aren't there in your
installation?

They're also available in the Formatting Palette [click the Toolbox button
if the palette isn't displayed] in the Borders & Shading group.

However, as far as Chart elements go, it appears they may have gotten so
carried away with the new fancy stuff that they omitted (intentionally or
inadvertently) the basic fill patterns you're looking for. If I can come up
with anything were both not yet finding I'll post back, but I the meantime
you might want to use Help> Send Feedback to voice your need for the
patterns in chart formatting.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Mauricio]

Thanks for your answer. I asked for that (and for a lot more) already.