Some stencils change to solid colors when drug from their shape window. As you can see, the second Exchange icon just went solid blue, whereas the first did not. The 2nd one is designated as opaque, which seems like it should cause the opposite effect, if anything. Is this a defect in the source shapes, or some global document property? Some shapes, like the Skype one, dont specify opaque, but act similarly. Transparency on all shapes is 0%, and Fill is set to solid, which is the default.

In this case, I am using a background, but feel like this has occurred intermittently for years, and I dont usually use backgrounds.

Hi,

Based on my test, this issue occurred when we have applied a theme. Sometimes, we downloaded the external stencils, the theme has been applied as default, we might to remove the theme manually. Go to Design tab>Clean the theme, it would be displayed well.

Similar thread:

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/90eeec3f-5942-438e-a190-dd3a23206cd0/visio-2010-stencil-not-displaying-properly-in-2013?forum=visiogeneral

Regards,

George, thank you for your research. It looks like here is yet another thread describing the problem.

I had suspected it was related to a global document property (tied to a theme), but am still wondering exactly what property or setting? I've just started a new blank diagram, selected a Microsoft theme and added my first Microsoft-supplied shape. I don't think a solution should be "don't use themes". This is especially challenging when multiple people are working on the same vsd file. If I am adding to a customer diagram, I shouldn't be deleting themes that they have

Hi Mike,

Based on my research and test, this issue is due to the to stencils themselves. I have not found the option/settings to control the default style of stencils yet. Thus, we might use the external stencils that without style or you can try the workaround:

Go to Design tab, expand the Themes drop down and un-tick "Apply Theme To New Shapes" 

Hope it's helpful.

Regards,