MS Paint: can one fill "transparent"

If there is a better suited forum/newsgroup for MS paint: please advise!

I am trying to generate a few icons using MS-Paint. The icons' background should be "transparent", i.e. not cover the underlying content. What color *is* "transparent"? And can one use MS Paint to fill an images background with that color?

All icons I created so far, have a white background (or whatever I choose as the image's background color) but not transparent.

I don't believe Paint can handle transparency. There is no "color".
When an area is transparent, you see thru it to whatever it behind it.
Also only .gif & .png formats support transparancy.

Download Microsoft's 'Image Edit' a tiny program capable of creating icons
with the two special 'colors' of 'See-through' and 'See-through inverse'.
It is limited to working with icons with only 16 colors but it is free.

Download 'Image Edit' from Microsoft at

[Effrey]

In Paint, there is a "select transparent" option, where you can select an area and drag it over another area without the white covering everything. When you click on the select area tool, click on the bottom button next, and when you drag, the white areas will be transparent. Hope that helps.