is there a manual way to change individual colors on color index palette

[riwiseuse]

i see i can change the palette after a fashion using "themes". I get that this theme approach gives shades of colors (the lack of a shading control seems particularly impoverished as you could get many more colors on the index if you could set the shade separately . . .). But it thus limits the number of colors you have available from the index palette.

I know that there are VBA routines i've seen for changing the colors but i'm just looking for a simple way to chose some number on the index color palette and associate a different RGB value with it. from what i understand, while there is a default palette, these 56 color choices are actually specific to the document and can be changed (maybe not the standard colors - and i know the standard palette can be added to as well, reducing the 'theme' palette, but this is apparently the most secret function in excel).

in searching this issue i find that some windows versions have a "microsoft office button" in the uppermost left corner of the screen that leads to "options" where this might be possible but i'm running 2011 on a MAc and cannot find an equivalent for this button.

[romperstomper]

You can change the standard palette using Excel - Preferences - Compatibility. There is no way I know of in Excel 2011 to create a custom theme or colour set - but you can do that in PowerPoint and save the theme from there, then load it in Excel.

[riwiseuse]

You can change the standard palette using Excel - Preferences - Compatibility. There is no way I know of in Excel 2011 to create a custom theme or colour set - but you can do that in PowerPoint and save the theme from there, then load it in Excel.

so i gave this a try. it appears that this is actually about how excel reads or displays colors from older documents. i was able to modify the compatibility palette but i was not able to make any calls to that palette to get those colors displayed in the document i;m working on.

i tried using =PATTERNS(1,1,6, FALSE) (where 6 is the number of the color i thought i modified counting across the first row of standard colors, there are no numbers so i don't know how the palette is really numbered) and FALSE means read old color value system not new color value system. and none of this shows up in the palette i can apply manually.

so i'm back to the beginning again. maybe there is something i'm missing here.

thanks,

brian

[romperstomper]

Sorry, I was simply giving you the Mac equivalent of this:

in searching this issue i find that some windows versions have a "microsoft office button" in the uppermost left corner of the screen that leads to "options" where this might be possible but i'm running 2011 on a MAc and cannot find an equivalent for this button.

I don't think you can alter the colours shown on the "Standard" part of the palette in the UI.