Charts changing colors in PPT2007 created in PPT2003

[Chris_MSI]

I was hoping the release of SP1 would fix this horrible bug for us but no
such luck! We jumped on the Office 2007 train earlier in the year and have
regretted it ever since.

We deliver a lot of PowerPoint reports to our customers, many of whom are
still on PowerPoint 2003 and do not have compatibility packs even. These
clients require the ability to modify presentations after we send them to
them so we have to save down in compatibility mode.

The recurring problem we have is we re-use a lot of PowerPoint presentations
that were originally created in PowerPoint 2000 and PowerPoint 2003. Some of
these files work fine in compatibility mode but others (mis)behave badly.
The biggest problem we have is chart colors being changed.

We will have a presentation with 50+ slides with 30+ charts through out the
presentation. When you look at the graphs in 2003 or 2007, everything
appears fine. As soon as you double click the graph in 2003 or 2007 it will
change the colors of the graph! You can manually go throught he pain of
fixing the colors but as soon as you modify it next time it changes back
again. This happens when you convert the graph object or edit existing in
2007.

This doesn't happen on all presentations but many of ours. I cannot find a
definitive reason for this. I *assume* it is related to how the graphs were
created originally in the previous version but I am not a PowerPoint expert.

If someone would like to look at one of these files to see what I am trying
to describe please post here where I can email it to and I will send one
right away. If anyone else has any potential fixes (i've changed print
drivers, hardware acceleration, tried on many, many machines, etc) or
explanations please let me know. Thanks for the help!

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Given your situation, you may be better off forcing PPT 2007 to use MSGraph
rather than Excel for charts.

MSGraph isn't installed by default, so you may need to rerun setup to install
it. Then add this key to the registry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER/SOFTWARE/MICROSOFT/OFFICE/12.0/Common/Charting/MSGraphEnable

It shoud be a DWORD = 1

The usual "This will kill your computer and take down civilization as we know it
if you mess up" warnings apply. If the above makes no sense to you, don't do
it.

When you do this, the following happens:

PowerPoint won't prompt the to convert existing MSGraph charts when you
double-click them. It simply treats it as earlier PPT versions normally treat
MSGraph charts.

When you insert a new chart or click the chart icon in a content placeholder,
PowerPoint inserts an MSGraph chart rather than the new-style Excel ones.

PowerPoint won't convert MSGraph charts if the user opens a legacy document and
clicks on OfficeButton, Convert.

 

[Chris_MSI]

Thanks for the help! I made that regedit and that eliminates the confusion
of converting objects which is good. I tested this on an existing file and
it didn't prompt so it is definitely just using existing MSGraph but as soon
as it opened to edit, the color of the graphs changed to something totally
different than what the rest of the presentation is. That is the biggest
problem for us.

Any idea why the colors are changing? I can send a sample file if that
helps. The colors change in PPT2007 and 2003.

 

[Echo S]

I suspect you may be experiencing the difference in the way the color
schemes used to work and the way they work now.
http://www.echosvoice.com/colorschemes.htm may help explain this better.

Feel free to send a file -- be sure to include a note so I know what I'm
looking at (this thread text would do fine also). Email is echos at indy dot
net. I crashed my Office 2007 / Vista installation and am rebuilding it now,
so it might be a couple days before I get back with you. Or it might be
really quick.

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

I see Echo's offered to look into this ... she's the Empress of the Empirical,
DuChartess of PPT; let's see what she makes of it. She'll email me a copy if she
needs someone to contribute to the confusion.