The visual appearance of shapes are mostly depending on their formatting properties such as the background, foreground, font selection and arrow presentations. A style is a named set of formatting properties. With style support, users can define a style with specific formatting properties, and reuse it on other shapes without the need of redefining the formatting again and again. This also facilitate mass updating of formatting properties of all shapes by just updating their style.

Saving a Shape's Formatting as Style

1. Let's start by editing a shape's formatting. Right click on the shape and select Styles and Formatting > Formats... from the popup menu.
   
2. Edit the shape's foreground properties such as the line appearance and font selection.
   
3. Edit the shape's background properties such as the fill style and transparency.
   
4. To save the defined formatting as a style, click the Save as button at the top right of the dialog box.
   
5. Give the style a name.
   
6. Press the Enter key to confirm. This creates a style which can be used by other shapes.

Creating a Style

While the above section described the steps for editing a shape's formatting as well as saving the formatting properties as style, you can also create style without editing a shape.

1. To start, select View > Style... from the main menu.
   
2. In the Style dialog box, click on the Add... button.
   
3. This popup the Edit Style dialog box. First, provide a name for the style.
   
4. Edit the Foreground, Background and Arrow formatting properties. The Arrow properties will only be applied to connectors that uses this style. It consists of settings such as arrow color, appearance and arrow head selections.
   
5. Click OK to confirm.

Applying a Style

1. Right click on the shape(s) that you want to change its appearance by applying a style, and select Styles and Formatting > Formats... from the popup menu.
   
2. In the Formats dialog box, select the style to apply with.
   
3. Click OK to confirm. The selected shape(s) will be refreshed to follow the style's properties.
   

Applying a Style (Alternative approach)

The previous section describe a way of applying style - selecting a shape first then the style. In this section, will see how to start from a style selection.

1. Select View > Style... from the main menu. This popup the floating Style dialog box.
   
2. In the diagram, select the shape(s) that you want apply a style to.
   
3. Select the style.
   
4. Click on the Apply button. The selected shape(s) will be refreshed to follow the style's properties.
   

Importing Styles

Styles can be imported from a project that have styles defined. In this section, we will import styles from another project that have two styles defined.

1. Select View > Style... from the main menu. This popup the Style dialog box.
2. Click on the Import... button.
   
3. In the file chooser, select the .vpp project file which contains the styles you needed.
4. This popup the Import Style dialog box. The left hand side of the dialog box lists the styles of the selected project. Select the styles you need to import. Multiple selection can be made here.
   
5. Click OK to confirm.
6. The styles are imported. You can use them in your project.
   

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