Removing guides from a parallelogram

[dianawild]

I design bathroom vanities and I thought Visio would be a good way to show a design.  I combine photographs and drawings to get my ideas across.  See attached example.  There is a letter at each corner of the parallelogram shape (that I downloaded as part of the Plane Geometry "library" from Microsoft.)  I want to fill the large parallelogram in this drawing to hide part of the photograph.  When I fill it, the space around the letters is also filled making it confusing to look at.  I was able to make the letters virtually invisible by changing the font size to 1pt, but I can't figure out how to change the background of these letters without effecting the whole shape.  Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Diana

[Paul Herber]

Hi Diana, welcome to the forum.
Assuming you don't want the ABCD at all, there is a simple way to do this.
Select the shape, right-click and select Group -> Ungroup.
(Normally I would say NEVER ungroup a shape, but in this case it's ok).
You will be asked:
"This action will sever the object's link to its master" - say yes to this.
Now you can select each letter in turn and delete them. You can also delete the diagonal lines.
Now apply your fill.

[vojo]

could try to use the basic shape parallelgram...no letters or internal lines