Open office gives us full control over the appearance of our shapes. If we wanted, we could fill our rectangle with color. Just select color from the area menu dropdown. Then choose the color with which you want to fill the rectangle.

You could also fill the area with a gradient, by selecting gradient from the dropdown and choosing a gradient.

Hatching is another option, Hatching fills the area with a pattern you specify.

The final option is bitmap which holds lots of creative possibilities.

Bitmap will fill the area with a tiled picture, there are several you can choose from by default or you can specify your own.

Although there are lots of options, we just want a hollow rectangle for this exercise so we'll make sure the area dropdown menu is set to invisible.