Custom color palette in Office

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Dan Henry - 04 Feb 2005 15:19 GMT

Our company has graphics standareds for the colors of our logo and text of
our brand. These standards are in RGB color code, and I would like to add
standard color selections to MS Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint) so that
users will not have to enter a custom color every time they need to use
these standard colors in text, fill, and line coloring in our documents.

Is there some way to afd custom colors to the standard palette, AND name
them so people will know this is ACME BLUE, ACME SILVER, etc.

Thanks,

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Suzanne S. Barnhill - 04 Feb 2005 15:44 GMT

I can't answer for Excel or PPT (which I believe actually differ from Word
in this respect), but in Word you cannot create a custom color palette. What
you can do is create character styles using custom font colors (which can be
given names such as you mention) and AutoText entries using custom colors
(these could include, say, AutoShapes using the colors). You could also
write macros to apply the colors as object fill, table/text shading, etc.

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Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
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> Our company has graphics standareds for the colors of our logo and text of
> our brand. These standards are in RGB color code, and I would like to add
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
>
> Thanks,

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Dan Henry - 04 Feb 2005 16:28 GMT

Suzanne, thanks for the reply! BTW, my comments are for Office 2002 ...

[Macros]
I did successfully create a macro as you suggest for the font color, but
object fill didn't work during macro recording (odd). Any ideas?

In any case, I think your idea on AutoText and Character Styles may be the
only solution.

[Office Color Management]
I was shocked that MS still does not have a consistent color management
system across office applications. As you suggest, Excel, PowerPoint and
Word are completely different in capabilities, form and function.

Powerpoint has a slide template color scheme you can create, but with very
specific parameters (text color, line color, accent color), rather than
allowing a fully customized palette.

Access has two completely different color management interfaces in one
application!
If you access color controls from the toolbar (font, fill, line), you get
one 40-color palette with no ability to customize the RGB/HSL. If you
access the color controls from the object's properties window 'Format' tab
builder (...), you get an old-school 48-color pallete that looks like it's
from Win98, with a 12-color custom color palette and a "Define Custom
Colors" button.

Excel has the ability to add to the standard color palette directly via
Tools | Options. There is actually a color tab there that allows inserting
your own custom colors into the standard 40-color text palette and 8-color
chart and line palettes.

This would be my preference, if I could package these modifications to the
standard palette (with color names that pop up on mouse-over) and distribute
as a template or add-in.

Thanks,
Dan

> I can't answer for Excel or PPT (which I believe actually differ from Word
> in this respect), but in Word you cannot create a custom color palette. What
[quoted text clipped - 22 lines]
> >
> > Thanks,

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