The patterns have actually become less useful with the advent of 300+ dpi
printers. The spacing between lines in printed patterns is so close that
it's hard to see the patterns. Rather then developing more useful, printer
resolution-independent patterns, Microsoft decided to go with shadows and
gradients and 3D surfaces and transparency, and who knows, maybe soon we'll
have this glass stuff.

You can still assign a pattern programmatically. Record a macro in Excel
2003 in which you apply a pattern, then use this code in 2007.

- Jon
-------
Jon Peltier, Microsoft Excel MVP
Tutorials and Custom Solutions
Peltier Technical Services, Inc. - http://PeltierTech.com
_______


"Arthur Tabachneck" wrote in message
oups.com...
On Aug 27, 5:39 pm, Arthur Tabachneck wrote:
Most of my graphs have to be black and white and are best produced
with simple left or right diagonal line fills, dots, or the like.

In drawing bar charts in previous versions of Excel, one could always
click (focus?) on a a bar or series of bars and then click on
format data series-fill effects- pattern and easily obtain such
effects.

Does anywhere here know whether the same is possible in Excel 2007
and, if so, how? I've search the menus and can't find that feature.

Thanks in advance,
Art

While I hadn't been able to locate an answer with a simple Google
search, from the comments already posted to this list, the answer is
"yes" and the only alternative (though far from perfect) is to save
graphs from previous versions of Excel as Templates.

Anyone have a clue as to why MS decided to discard "patterns"?

Art