Create reusable custom shapes in Microsoft Excel or even Office in general

In Microsoft Excel 2007/2010, or even Microsoft Office in general,

Say I use the use Insert > Shapes to create a drawing in Excel, is it possible to save this drawing in as a new Shape itself in the Shape dropdown selection? Or maybe under clip art? The Shape needs to be editable and formattable.

In Photoshop, this would be similar to the custom brushes.

It would be better if the new shapes can be associated at the Workbook level rather than Application or Office Suite level.

EDIT: My solution is to create WMF files programatically and save them in a network location. The most important issue addressed here is that the imported drawings can still be edited.

1 Answer

This is not possible in Excel 2007/2010. This article describes what you can and cannot do with shapes in VBA and nowhere is there VBA that will allow us to add a new shape with a new shape index number.

What you can do is copy/paste your shape, or save your shape as a picture and insert it through picture or clipart. You could also put your shape on a template excel file so that it could be used. But, unfortunately, there is no way to add it to the excel shapes index currently.