Changing Excel's default Automatic Color from Black


Posted by Simon on July 31, 2001 7:49 PM

I posted this querstion on 26 July but it doesn't appear in the strings on this page. Can someone tell me please if I broke some chatroom rule or something?

Meanwhile I stilldesperately need an answer. In our publications we don't use balck at all. Very tedious not to be able to reset the Automatic color stting.

Posted by anon on July 31, 2001 10:43 PM

Don't think you broke anything but I think Mr Excel did. There seems to be a week's worth of posts missing. Mr Excel has had a few people make him aware of this so I'm sure it's in hand.

Rather than me reproduce the relevant Excel help topic here, if you enter the following phrase into the Help function you should find what you need:

"Customize the defaults for a workbook or worksheet by using a template"

basically you have 2 options - create a new default template or modify the existing default template.

Posted by simon on August 01, 2001 3:45 AM

Posted by anon on August 01, 2001 4:39 PM

Simon
There may be a VBA solution to changing the Automatic colour but that's not my bag. Sorry.

As for needing a 'global' solution, creating your own template with your choice of text colour will give you that colour as the default for every new file you create, but won't change the text colour of files which weren't created using the modified template. I'm not sure if there's any way to do that, but having said that there are things I have learned about Excel through this board that I wouldn't have even dreamed you could do.
Good luck

Posted by simon on August 01, 2001 6:23 PM




Posted by Ivan F Moala on August 03, 2001 5:12 AM

Try this.....unsure if it works for all os past 95

Private Declare Function GetSysColor Lib "user32" (ByVal nIndex As Long) As Long
Private Declare Function SetSysColors Lib "user32" (ByVal nChanges As Long, lpSysColor As Long, lpColorValues As Long) As Long

Sub ChangeColorDefaultText()
Dim Kolor
Dim CurKolor
'Black 0 0 0
'Blue 0 0 255
'Green 0 255 0
'Cyan 0 255 255
'Red 255 0 0
'Magenta 255 0 255
'Yellow 255 255 0
'White 255 255 255
CurKolor = GetSysColor(8)
If CurKolor <> 0 Then
'restore to Default
Kolor = SetSysColors(1, 8, RGB(0, 0, 0))
Else
'color it red
Kolor = SetSysColors(1, 8, RGB(255, 0, 0))
End If

End Sub

ivan