Color compatibility excel 2007

This tool is good, but only deals with the background.

I have modified it to include an equivalent font colour tool in the same tab, and renamed the tab to "2003 colours"


It took a lot of research to find out how to modify it, and I ended up changing the file extension to zip, extracting CustomUI.XML from the CustomUI folder in the zip file, editing it and copying it back to the ZIP, then renaming it back to xlsm.

To use this, open in Excel 2007/10 and use Save AS, Other Formats, Excel Addin. This will save it in the right location. Then go into Excel Options, Addins, Manage Excel Addins and tick ColourTool.

Geoff

Further to my last post I have also added my checking tool which will identify any cells with non-Excel 2003 colours and list the addresses and colours actually used. The tab now has 3 sections, one for fill picking, one for font colour picking and one for checking. You can check the current sheet or all sheets in the active workbook.

The checker will make a new, unsaved workbook with the list of errors. If the list is empty it means all cells checked had conforming Excel 2003 colours.

Geoff

Dear Geoff,

Thanks for the great tool!

When I run the .xlsm version, it works perfectly. However, I'm struggling with your instructions for the Add-in part. In Excel 2010 on Win XP (SP3), after saving it as an add-in in my ADDIN folder, the ColourTool add-in appears only "Inactive Application Add-in" section, and selecting it and clicking OK doesn't do anything. Furthermore, when I subsequently close the workbook, Excel always crashes.

Any thoughts?

Thanks again,

Tom

Setting up Colour Checker.docNot sure - I have only been able to test with Office 2007 on Win 7. I may be able to test on 2010 on XP and will do so if I get the chance.
See attached doc for the Options settings in Excel 2007

Thanks for this. Unfortunately, in my Excel 2010, it only shows up in the Inactive Application Add-ins section. Odd...

Did you try the "Manage" function and select Excel Addins and click GO? I notice that when I do this the unchecked items appear in the inactive list and the checked items (in my case only Colourtool.xls) appear in the active list. I would expect that if you tick the checkbox against Colourtool.xls that it would become activated. Pls advise what happens.
Geoff

Sorry. I'm an idiot. Yes, that works perfectly. Many thanks for a great tool!!

Good news, saves me testing in the 2010/XP environment.

I still run into other formatting issues which the tool does not handle, such as chart colours and conditional formatting differences. Microsoft have never really understood the user impact of backward compatibility issues, particularly when various users are running different versions and files are exchanged between the different environments. The seem to assume the whole world upgrades to the new version at the same time!
Geoff

Minor point, but the above colour tool seems to change the background colour of an object when it should be changing the font colour.

I amended Andy Pope's colour change tool to handle some shapes correctly here.

Thanks for pointing out this error.

I normally only use the tool for cell colours.
In the modified file Excel_2003_Colors.xlam, the following code is used in m_ApplyFontColor(CIndex As Long)

Selection.ShapeRange.TextFrame.Characters.Font.ColorIndex = CIndex '// + 7

My Excel 2007 gives an error message "Method Characters of object TextFrame failed.

Geoff

Originally Posted by Geoff59

This tool is good, but only deals with the background.

I have modified it to include an equivalent font colour tool in the same tab, and renamed the tab to "2003 colours"


It took a lot of research to find out how to modify it, and I ended up changing the file extension to zip, extracting CustomUI.XML from the CustomUI folder in the zip file, editing it and copying it back to the ZIP, then renaming it back to xlsm.

To use this, open in Excel 2007/10 and use Save AS, Other Formats, Excel Addin. This will save it in the right location. Then go into Excel Options, Addins, Manage Excel Addins and tick ColourTool.

Geoff

Thanks a lot, even a few years later !
This tools work perfectly with office 365 ! This really help me to recover bright and readable cell filling colours.
Never understand why they make this change really annoying everywhere!

Originally Posted by trollhollo

Thanks a lot, even a few years later !
This tools work perfectly with office 365 ! This really help me to recover bright and readable cell filling colours.
Never understand why they make this change really annoying everywhere!

Thanks for your reply. Backwards compatibility is important, something Microsoft has yet to understand.