Excel 2003 SpreadsheetML Color Attribute Question

[Shutty]

I have an application that generates a SpreadsheetML file. It contains style elements that specify the background colors of cells.

e.g.

<Style ss:ID="s21">
   <Alignment ss:Vertical="Center"/>
   <Borders/>
   <Font/>
   <Interior ss:Color="#8080C0" ss:Pattern="Solid"/>
   <NumberFormat/>
   <Protection/>
  </Style>

the hex triplet color above translates to an RGB of 128, 128, 192; a rather nice purple colour (as can be viewed in PaintBrush). However when the cell is rendered in Excel the background colour is a dull dark gray! (#808080).

Are there any known issues/workarounds regarding the excel color palette?

 

[alexp2000]

Shutty,

From my experience of using the Excel colour palette, it will only let you use up to 56 different RGBs, which it stores as ColorIndexs. You could possibly try storing this RGB as ColorIndex 30 say by:

ActiveWorkbook.Colors(30) = RGB(128,128,192)

Then set the ColorIndex property as opposed to the Color to 30. I suspect that Excel is not letting you set the Color to this value as it is not in its 'set' of Colors.

Alex

 

[Shutty]

Thanks for your reply alex, after alot more investigation i found this to be the case. I found this article quite useful http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/colors.htm#dpalette.

I tend to generate my SpreadsheetML from scratch as it executes faster than generating an Excel object first. the actual SpreadsheetML required to change the excel colour palette is..

  <Colors>
   <Color>
    <Index>21</Index>
    <RGB>#FF8040</RGB>
   </Color>
    <Color>
    <Index>23</Index>
    <RGB>#FFFF40</RGB>
   </Color>
   ...etc...
  </Colors>

Why Excel limits itself to 56 colours and does not use the rich windows colour palette I do not know!

 

[alexp2000]

Excellent, I'm glad you sorted that out Shutty.
Thanks for posting the SpreadsheetML stuff, its not something I know a huge amount about (as you may have gathered by my posting), but something that is certainly of interest to me.

Alex

 

[Shutty]

no problem, it is a topic i have become all to familier with over the last few days!