Excel has always included a color chooser icon and dropdown for both fill color and font color. In the past, you could open the dropdown to choose a new color, or click the icon to use the previously selected color. Suddenly, you have a new Windows 8 laptop and the behaviour has changed - when you click the icon, it opens the dropdown and forced you to choose the last color again! It turns out that a new default setting on Windows 8 laptops is causing the problem. Learn how to go back to a normal 2-control color chooser.
Transcript of the video:
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Learn Excel form MrExcel podcast episode 1767.
Excel 2013 Color Chooser Broken?
Hey, welcome back to the MrExcel netcast.
I'm Bill Jelen.
So, here we are on Excel 2010 and you know we have these two color drop downs up here the way it works you open little drop down and you choose a fill color, but then after that you should be able to just click on the item to choose the last chosen color.
All right, so, if we wanted to choose to change to a different font color, you have to open the drop down and then choose the font color.
but then changing to a different font color is just simply clicking the icon not the drop down right?
That's the way it's been working forever.
I'm going to flip over to Excel 2013 and you're going to encounter this problem.
If you are using Excel 2013, on your brand new touchscreen laptop or touchscreen tablet or something with a touchscreen you come in here and initially you know you go in you choose the color that you want of course different colors, but then the next time when we want to go apply that you click on just the A and it opens the drop down instead of applying the last color.
So now, becomes 2 clicks and it's you know is not really just guys it's a click, go find the same color and select again very very annoying like why would they change this.
Well it turns out that you are in something called touch mode and touch mode happens automatically.
If you're using Excel 2013, on a touch enabled device.
If you have a touchscreen, they put it in touch mode let's figure out how to get out of touch mode.
So, across the top here we have our quick access toolbar at the right under that.
The list of common commands that you can add to the quick access toolbar and Excel 2013 one of the new common commands is Touch/Mouse Mode and that adds this icon you still have to come here and open the icon and switch from touch back to mouse.
All right, see everything just got closer, I mean that is the, that is the advertised reason more space between commands, but it's not just more space between commands because this command is definitely differencing.
Now, I can select the last used color with a single click they separate the icon from the drop down, but when your touch mode jam them back together, very frustrating you know you just bought a new computer you're trying to use Excel and it doesn't do what you wanted to do it turns out that it's defaulting to touch mode.
Oh! hey, I want to thank you for stopping by.
We'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
Learn Excel form MrExcel podcast episode 1767.
Excel 2013 Color Chooser Broken?
Hey, welcome back to the MrExcel netcast.
I'm Bill Jelen.
So, here we are on Excel 2010 and you know we have these two color drop downs up here the way it works you open little drop down and you choose a fill color, but then after that you should be able to just click on the item to choose the last chosen color.
All right, so, if we wanted to choose to change to a different font color, you have to open the drop down and then choose the font color.
but then changing to a different font color is just simply clicking the icon not the drop down right?
That's the way it's been working forever.
I'm going to flip over to Excel 2013 and you're going to encounter this problem.
If you are using Excel 2013, on your brand new touchscreen laptop or touchscreen tablet or something with a touchscreen you come in here and initially you know you go in you choose the color that you want of course different colors, but then the next time when we want to go apply that you click on just the A and it opens the drop down instead of applying the last color.
So now, becomes 2 clicks and it's you know is not really just guys it's a click, go find the same color and select again very very annoying like why would they change this.
Well it turns out that you are in something called touch mode and touch mode happens automatically.
If you're using Excel 2013, on a touch enabled device.
If you have a touchscreen, they put it in touch mode let's figure out how to get out of touch mode.
So, across the top here we have our quick access toolbar at the right under that.
The list of common commands that you can add to the quick access toolbar and Excel 2013 one of the new common commands is Touch/Mouse Mode and that adds this icon you still have to come here and open the icon and switch from touch back to mouse.
All right, see everything just got closer, I mean that is the, that is the advertised reason more space between commands, but it's not just more space between commands because this command is definitely differencing.
Now, I can select the last used color with a single click they separate the icon from the drop down, but when your touch mode jam them back together, very frustrating you know you just bought a new computer you're trying to use Excel and it doesn't do what you wanted to do it turns out that it's defaulting to touch mode.
Oh! hey, I want to thank you for stopping by.
We'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
