Select one or more shapes, arrows or text elements and a small Quick style panel appears on the left edge of the canvas, halfway down, clear of the Palette on the right. It holds the handful of style choices people make most often, so restyling is one click rather than a trip through the right-click menu. The right-click menu is still the home of every setting; the panel only repeats the favourites.
What's in it
From top to bottom:
- Highlighter colour and Highlighter width, for highlights: the marker's five colours and three widths. They also show, captioned Highlighter, when you pick the Highlighter tile with nothing selected, and set the stroke you are about to draw. In Draw mode a selected marker stroke gets Marker colour and Marker width in the same place.
- Stroke: seven colours for the outline or line, then Ink. The first is the theme's own default.
- Background: seven colours for a shape's fill.
- Text colour, for text elements: seven colours for the words, then Ink. The first is the theme's own text colour.
- Every colour row ends with More colours, which opens the full colour picker: the row's theme colours, the same ten colours every picker offers, the colours already used in this document, and Add a custom colour (four coloured dots) for any colour of your own. (A shape's label colour is in the right-click menu's Colours section.)
- Stroke width: thin, medium or thick.
- Stroke style: solid, dashed or dotted for shapes. For arrows it is solid, dashed or flowing, a dashed line that marches along its direction, so an animated connector is a single click. A selection mixing shapes and arrows gets the shape set.
- Corners, in Draw mode only: none, small, medium or large, for rectangles and the other shapes with square corners.
- Text alignment: left, centre or right. It shows once a shape has a label to align.
- Icon alignment, when a shape carries an icon: before, above or after its label.
- Clear styles, at the bottom.
A section only shows when something in the selection can use it, so an arrow on its own shows stroke, width and style, a text element on its own shows text colour, and a shape with an icon gains icon alignment. Sticky notes, tables, images and other non-shape elements are not styled here; select only those and the panel stays away.
Colours that follow the theme
The seven colours come from the tab's theme. A multi-colour theme offers its own six branch colours; any other theme offers red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet in its own tone, so a muted theme gets muted colours. Backgrounds always keep the label readable, and text colours are always dark enough (or, on a dark canvas, light enough) to read.
Switch the theme later and colours picked here move with it: a shape you made green stays green, in the new theme's green.
Ink is different: it is the same drawing colour on every theme, dark on a light canvas and light on a dark one. In Draw mode the Stroke and Text colour rows offer Draw mode's stock colours instead of the theme's.
Your own colours
Right-click any of the six theme colours in a row (or focus it and press Shift+F10 or the context-menu key) to open the custom colour picker. Press Use and the colour is saved into that swatch, replacing the theme's colour there, and a small dot in its corner marks it as yours. Screen readers and the tooltip name it too, for example "Custom orange, in place of Green".
Picking a colour only changes the swatch; click it afterwards to use it. Clear override in the same popover brings the theme's colour back, and anything you already painted keeps its colour. Your swatches belong to you and to the theme you made them in: they follow you to other documents and devices, and switching to another theme shows that theme's own colours (and any you changed there). The first swatch, the theme default, always stays the theme's, and so does Ink. A custom colour does not follow later theme changes. For colours a whole diagram should share, make a custom theme.
Styling many at once
Select several shapes and arrows, even of different kinds, and a choice applies to every one that supports it. A highlighted option means every selected element shares it; when they differ, nothing is highlighted. Locked elements are left alone. Each choice is one undo step.
The next shape remembers
When you change a shape's colours, width, style or alignment, from this panel or from the right-click menu, the next shape of the same kind you draw arrives the same way. Make a circle green and the next circle is green; the next square is not. Arrows remember their own style, separately from shapes, and text elements remember their colour. Picking the theme default again forgets that choice.
This only applies to shapes and arrows you draw yourself, from the palette, a tool or a quick-connect plus. Pasted, duplicated and templated elements keep their own looks. The memory belongs to the document and stays in this browser.
Clear styles
Clear styles returns the selection to the theme's defaults and forgets the remembered style for those kinds, so the next shape is plain again. Use it when a style was meant as a one-off. It is one undo step.
Building a flowchart? Style the first decision diamond, the first step box and the first arrow the way you want, then keep drawing: every new diamond, box and arrow follows on its own.
Turning it off
Open Settings, then Panels, Quick Style, and switch off Enable Quick Style Panel. Every style is still in the element's right-click menu, and the next shape still remembers its style. See Settings.
Good to know
- The panel is not shown on phones. On a phone the long-press menu has the same options.
- It never covers the palette or other panels: with a panel already on the left edge it moves below, above or beside it. It hides while a right-click menu is open.
- It also stands aside in zen mode, while presenting, in Plan mode, for Viewers and Participants, and on a locked tab.
- It is a compact strip, without a panel header.
- Every option has a name for screen readers and a tooltip; each row is a group you move through with the arrow keys.
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