Dick,
Wow. It looks like you're right. I just did a workaround that had
better results than the original:
- Open up Paint and set the image size to 16x16, using Image >
Attributes from the Paint toolbar. (See note below).
- Zoom the image to 8x.
- Click View > Zoom > Show Grid from the menu.
- Draw a diagonal line from the top right corner to the bottom left.
(I used a gray line.)
- Save to your My Pictures folder.
- Repeat for any other patterns or directions you want.
- In Excel's Format Shape dialog, set the fill to Picture and import
the image you just created.
- Using the tiling effects, you can create much better patterns then
the previous versions of Excel.
Note: Create different sized images in Paint to vary the pitch of the
patterns.
Another workaround would be to open a file created in Excel 2003 that
contained a pattern-filled shape, then use the Format Painter tool
(wherever that is on the Ribbon). I haven't tried this, but it should
probably work.
HTH,
Nicholas Hebb
BreezeTree Software
http://www.breezetree.com