Format Changes when moving sheets

**lachy725** · 08-05-2012, 06:35 PM

Greetings excelforum,

Over the weekend our IT department has changed the server which I export reports for work. The reports look exactly the same but for some reason when I attempt to move the sheet onto my main excel file, all the formatting of the sheet changes.

The rows alternated between a transparent grey colour and white colour - now the rows alternate between red and green. All the headings have changed from navy blue to black and some other headings have changed from Black to white and are no longer showing.

The problem only seems to occur when the sheet is moved from one excel file to another - does anyone know why the act of moving a sheet could cause all these format changes? The only answer I can think of is the file type may change which could cause some issues.

I believe the report exports to a 97-03 excel type and I am using excel 2007 - could this be the problem?

I have checked the cells that have the formatting issues and they have no conditional formatting conditions or data validation.

Let me know if there is anything else that may help.

Thanks,

lachy725

**shg** · 08-05-2012, 06:38 PM

Excel 2003 has a 56-color palette -- that's all the colors that are available for cells.

**lachy725** · 08-05-2012, 06:47 PM

Originally Posted by shg

Excel 2003 has a 56-color palette -- that's all the colors that are available for cells.

I'm sorry but I'm not sure I understand the relevance of your response. 2003 has a 56-colour palette - would that not mean that excel 2007 would have more, meaning that any colour that is present in 2003 would also be present in 2007?

The colour that changes to red is white, background 1, 15% darker
The colour that changes to green is an unfilled cell.

**shg** · 08-05-2012, 06:50 PM

You said you're exporting to xls format, right? So when you're in compatability mode with the xls file open, you can put any color you want in a cell, but when you save it, and then open it in Excel 2003, those colors will be changed to a color on the color palette.

There's no need to quote my posts back to me.

**lachy725** · 08-05-2012, 06:58 PM

Correct I am exporting to xls.

I can change the cells to any colour, save them and re-open the file and it will look as per I saved it - the only time the colours change is when I move the sheet from one file to another. Looking at the excel files they are both 97-03 excel xls files.

**shg** · 08-05-2012, 07:14 PM

If you move a worksheet sheet from one Excel 97-2003 workbook to another, the colors on the sheet will change to the palette colors of the workbook it is now in.

**lachy725** · 08-05-2012, 07:22 PM

I understand what you are saying - but why would a plain cell with no fill change to a palette colour of red?

The colours that the sheet exports in are not unique colours they are black, white and white, background 1, 15% darker. Would these colours not be present in every palette of every version of excel?

Also If I wish to stop the colours from changing - what am I required to do?

I tried converting the sheet once exporting it - now an error relating to rows and colums is present and if I copy paste a segment of the workbook it also goes to green and red.

**shg** · 08-05-2012, 07:25 PM

You could reset the color palettes of all the workbooks so that they all use the default colors: Tools > Options > Color, Reset.

Or set them all to use the same color palette: Tools > Options > Color, Copy colors from

**lachy725** · 08-05-2012, 07:36 PM

Resetting the colours on my file I have been working with leaves the cells unchanged.

Resetting the colours on the new exported excel file causes all the colours to change to red and green. Copying the colours from the existing workbook into the exported file, also changes the colours to red and green.

I'm assuming that means that the exported file has some strange background colour scheme? Does it sound like I may have to manually change the colours to suit?

**shg** · 08-06-2012, 11:01 AM

Dunno. Suggest you open both workbooks (existing and exported) in SEPARATE instances of Excel 2003 and look at the color palettes. Are they different? Does one have the default palette and the other have a custom palette?