Turn off Theme Colors?

[Joel Yates]

I am working in PowerPoint 2007, but in an organization that is
primarily using 2003. I'm repeatedly running into the problem that
after I build my charts and send them out, when they're opened by the
next user (in 2003) the colors change. I understand why this happens
(Office 2003 treating colors differently than 2007). The only
workaround I'm aware of is to first set the color normally (by picking
from the theme colors), and then reset the color by clicking "more
colors", which makes the color absolute (instead of a reference to a
dynamic theme color).

Is there an easier way to do this, or more importantly, a way to do
this universally? Is there a way to set my options in 2007 to set all
colors absolutely? Or perhaps a macro to reset every color from a
theme color to absolute (I can't imagine that a macro looping through
every object on every slide would be particularly speedy, and most of
my presentations are 100+ slides.

The manual workaround is prone to error and rather a pain, but I've
been unable to find a better way.

 

[Echo S]

Why not work with MSGraph, which is what 2003 uses for charting, instead of
Excel, which is prone to switching colors like that.

You could then use the MSGraph palette to choose your colors.

 

[Joel Yates]

Poor language choice on my part - I tend to use "chart"
interchangeably with "slide". It isn't just a matter of graphs, the
problem also applies to text and shapes of all types. MSGraph can
help with the graph colors (though with a lot of lost capability and
aesthetics), but it does not help with the text and shape colors.

 

[Echo S]

Poor language choice on my part - I tend to use "chart"
interchangeably with "slide". It isn't just a matter of graphs, the
problem also applies to text and shapes of all types. MSGraph can
help with the graph colors (though with a lot of lost capability and
aesthetics), but it does not help with the text and shape colors.

Ah, yeah, then you definitely need absolute colors instead of relative/theme
colors.

What I would do is set up a palette slide -- put a bunch of squares on there
and apply the absolute colors you need. (I mean, you should have some
semblance of a color scheme you're using, even if you don't want the colors
to be tied to the theme, right? ;-) )

Once you have that palette slide set up, you can use the eyedropper tools.
Or Format Painter. But the eyedroppers are inherently "sticky," so they're
easier to use in many ways. You will have to add them to the Quick Access
Toolbar, because they are not on the ribbon for some crazy reason.

To add the eyedroppers to the QAT, right-click the QAT (the little bar with
Save, Undo and Redo on it -- you only get those 3 tools by default) and
choose Customize QAT. In the resulting dialog, choose "All Commands" in the
"choose commands from" dropdown. This gives you an alpha list of all the
stuff you can add to the QAT.

You want to add Pick Up Style (the up eyedropper) and Apply Style (the down
eyedropper).

Now click the swatch on the palette slide, click the Pick Up eyedropper to
pick up the style. Select another object and clickt he Apply Style
eyedropper to apply the formatting.

You can also use the eyedroppers to apply text formatting by selecting
*text* (not the object), pickup style, then select other text and apply
style.

This will help you, but it's definitely not as easy as having the colors on
the color picker. So...

Alternatively -- and this might actually be faster in the long run -- you
could add custom colors to your color pickers. Those are absolute colors,
not tied to the theme. You have to edit the THMX file manually to do this,
though. See http://www.echosvoice.com/2007/customcolors1.htm for info.