Force stop automatic color variance in charts

[coffield]

Hi,

We are trying to create a color theme to restrict the colors Excel to just our branded colors. I know how to change the first 6 colors in a series, but I don't know how to get Excel to stop auto formatting the rest of the colors and just force it to use our branded colors instead. I was thinking maybe I would have to create a macro, but I'm not even sure if that's going in the right direction or if its even possible. Blarg, help!!

-E

 

[thisoldman]

Excel is going to loop through the colors, using the first six accent colors from left to right as it assigns them to each series. It then assigns the seventh through twelfth series to darker shades of the first six accent colors. I forget how it goes on from there—the colors are all variations on the chosen color scheme.

One big drawback with using the color themes is people will change the theme and your carefully chosen palette will disappear.

Chart templates do save the custom colors, but it can be an annoyance to access them: go to Insert >> Recommended Charts then choose the "All Charts" tab and then go hunting for the correct template.

It is possible to assign the templates to buttons on the Quick Access Toolbar with a little VBA. Piquet00 gives a very brief outline of one method in this recent thread: https://www.mrexcel.com/forum/excel-questions/1030258-quickest-access-your-chart-templates.html

 

[coffield]

Thank you for this!! At least I am not missing anything.

I can't seem to protect the colors as I adjust the chart to match whatever table I am using if it doesn't conform to the color theme. Unfortunately, I just end up with the same problem, templates or not.

 

[thisoldman]

You might be able to adapt one of Jon Peltier's macros for changing series colors. I think I might start with the one listed here, https://peltiertech.com/interactive-formatting-chart-series-with-cells-color/.

The macro is for color selection by the user, but you could change that to use a fixed color for each series by series number. It performs different coloring actions for different chart types. I was impressed with its thoroughness.