Drawing various shapes

You can use the various drawing tools on the Drawing toolbar to manually draw straight lines, lines with arrowheads (simply referred to as arrows), rectangular and square shapes, and oval and circular shapes. To draw any of these shapes, click the appropriate button and then drag the thin, black cross pointer to draw its outline. When drawing a line or arrow, Excel draws the line from the place where you originally click the mouse button to the place where you release it.

When drawing a rectangle or an oval, you can constrain the tool to draw a square or circle by holding down the Shift key as you drag the mouse. Note that when drawing a two-dimensional shape - such as a rectangle, a square, an oval, or a circle - Excel automatically draws the shape with a white fill that obscures any data or graphics objects that are beneath the shape on layers below.

After you've drawn the basic shape, you can then use the Fill Color, Line Color, Line Style, Dash Style, Shadow Style, and 3-D Style buttons on the Drawing toolbar to enhance the basic shape.

In addition to drawing your own shapes, you can insert any number of ready-made shapes (including lines, arrows, flow chart symbols, banners, and callouts) by selecting them from the AutoShapes pop-up menu and then sizing them in the worksheet.