Conditional Formatting Font Color Not Working

Question

I am trying to conditionally format my data in Office 365 Excel.  It will not allow me to change the font color in custom mode.

The dialogue box below comes up when I select Custom Format.  There is not a way for me to change the font other than font style.  It appears that there is other formatting on the cells, but I have tried to remove all previous formatting beforehand and it still gives me this.  If I select the color drop-down, it looks like it will allow  me to change, but when I select a color it reverts back to automatic.

Answer 1

Thank you for so eloquently summing up the problems that I ,as well as, others are having with this issue.

I just noticed my colors are not showing in any of my Excel spreadsheets, this was happening in Word & PowerPoint but I was able to go to the View tab & click color instead of black & white but this is not an option in Excel.

Any suggestions?

Thx in advance 

V

Answer 2

Hi Luellen, et al,

I've been having the exact same problem as the rest of you, ever since my IT department loaded Office 365 onto my company laptop a couple of months ago. I've tried everything, approaching it from different angles and places but nothing worked (but this morning I discovered something). 

Below is what I wrote to my IT department looking for help - which hasn't been answered by them yet, as I just wrote this only this morning (Sunday).

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Hi HelpDesk,

This is getting frustrating:

1. Excel is acting up again, and again, but …
2. I can’t reload like I used to with the old laptop.

EXCEL acting up:

It is the same problem as before, with the Conditional Formatting of the FONT Colors – the extended “More Colors” palette is unavailable.  This is happening often and randomly, and the funny thing is that it sometimes corrects itself the next day or whenever I leave the machine off and come back to it sometime much later. It doesn’t correct itself when I simply turn off the laptop and turn it back on.

I can’t seem to find online any explanation of why this happens.

With the old laptop, it might happen extremely rarely, once in a blue moon, but when it did, I would reload/update Excel and it would go away (which I can’t do now with the new laptop because I need "Admin" access).

Here’s Exactly the issue:

When accessing the font “Color” option’s drop down list from the “Format Cells” in the Conditional Formatting’s “Edit Formatting Rule”, the option dialog opens, but with the “More Colors” greyed out, so that when I click on it, the dialog just closes and nothing happens.

Also, if I click on the previously selected color from the “Recent Colors” where the colour originated from the “More Colors” pallet (from a previously saved spreadsheet), it also closes with nothing happening.

When I select any of the Automatic, Theme, or Standard Colors, it works fine.

Here’s the “but…” part that I just discovered:

Now for the strangest thing … when I use the keyboard (instead of the pointer/mouse) to select the “More Colors” pallet by typing “M”, the “Colors” pallet opens and I can successfully select (with the mouse) any colour and everything works normally.

Nothing like this happens in any other Excel area, nor on MS Word at all.

Any ideas for solving this? (other than suggesting I use the keyboard “M” every time).  If it is something that only MS can solve in its coding, then I guess I’m **** out of luck. At least, I found a work around.

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So, I hope this helps someone out there, as I can see this has been frustrating to more people out there than just me.

Les T.

Answer 3

Les, you are a Genius!!! Yes, it helps.

I'm having exactly the same problem as the OP and others - Office 365.

Using the mouse, some of the colours are selectable (it seems to change which ones) and for others it just closes the colour selection pop-up and leaves the previous selection.

But it's possible to select any colour using the arrow keys and <Enter>!

Thanks, again!

Adrian

Answer 4

Les T thanks very much for the workaround. Office 365 is garbage and it's great to have help from other users as MS can't even support their own flawed products.

Wish I could roll back to Office 2013.

Regards, Chris.

Answer 5

Same problem here - cannot select by mouse, but by keyboard.

It also seems the colors selectable are the ones that somehow match the color set of the current theme...

br,

P