Changing colors

[dareman93]

I am running Excel 2016 with the latest updates, as is everyone else in my office. I created a spreadsheet for another engineer that will automatically calculate payment penalties for asphalt that does not meet the contract specifications per Michigan DOT standards. All of the macros and formulas work just fine on my computer as well as others I've tested it on. However, when anyone else attempts to enter data into the spreadsheet, all of the colors in cell backgrounds are gone (including cells with conditional formatting).

In attempting to diagnose the issue, I thought maybe it had something to do with AutoCAD (both of the people I initially had test the sheet hand AutoCAD open), but it doesn't seem to make a difference (I opened AutoCAD on my computer and the spreadsheet opened just fine and they exited out of AutoCAD and opened it, and the colors were still gone).

Further checking found that, if they scroll down and then back up, some of the colors will come back in some of the cells. If they enter a value into one of the cells, most of the cells will turn black. If they undo it (Ctrl-Z) and re-do the data entry using Ctrl-Y, the value will show up and the cells won't be all black, but the colors still aren't the same as what I originally set them up as.

I am losing my mind trying to figure this one out. Anyone got any ideas or seen anything like this before?

 

[mumps]

It appears that Excel 2016 has more than one problem. I have experienced the same issue that you describe. The only way I can get around it is to open a version of the file that is working properly, highlight and copy the entire sheet that has all the right colors and then paste special only the format (not the data) onto the sheet where the colors are messed up. Excel 2016 also has another issue with creating phantom drop down arrows in cells that have data validation where your drop down list doesn't display when you click on the cell. I think that the color issue is most likely a glitch in the 2016 version of Excel. Hopefully, Microsoft will get it right and issue a fix in the next update.

 

[dareman93]

It appears that you're right, mumps. I actually did not have the latest update from Microsoft installed. I noticed the prompt this afternoon when I re-opened Excel after it crashed and decided to install the update to see if it would fix the issue causing the crash (right clicking on a shape and choosing "Format Shape").

The update did fix the "Format Shape" issue, but now when I open that spreadsheet for the HMA Calculations, I have the same coloring issues as appeared on all of the other computers I tried it on.

SMH...come on, Microsoft. How much money have we paid you over the years and you still can't get it right and release a "fix" without breaking something else?

 

[mumps]

Well said!!!!