custom shading for tables in Word

M

Mango

I made some custom colors for backround shading in tables, but I have to
manually enter the RGB values each time I want to use one. Is there no
option to save them for quick retrieval?
 
S

Suzanne S. Barnhill

You can save custom font color in a character style, custom paragraph
shading in a paragraph style. The only way (that I know of) to save custom
cell shading is in a table style, and if you're wanting to apply it to only
selected cells, this may not be practical.
 
C

Cindy M -WordMVP-

Hi =?Utf-8?B?TWFuZ28=?=,
I made some custom colors for backround shading in tables, but I have to
manually enter the RGB values each time I want to use one. Is there no
option to save them for quick retrieval?
Short of recording making the settings in a macro, no.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or
reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail :)
 
M

Mango

Thank you both for your input. I found that within the same table you can
apply custom colors to a cell by first clicking on a cell that already
contains the color, (of course this means the color will have to have been
manually created in the file already). Then open the Tables and Borders menu
and click on the drop down arrow on the Shading Color icon, then More Fill
Colors..., which if all goes well, opens up the Colors pane with the Custom
tab pre-selected and your custom color pre-loaded at the lower right. Click
OK and you'll notice the little bar of color on the Shading Color icon is now
your custom color. Now you can click in a cell or row, or whatever, then
click on the Shading Color icon( the icon, not the arrow) and your color is
applied to that cell, row, etc. Sometimes, however, when you select a cell
containing the color you want, clicking More Fill Colors...doesn't take you
to the Custom tab pane with the color pre-loaded, but the Standard tab pane
with nothing pre-loaded. I don't know why this happens. The above method may
seem tedious, but it's better than manually entering RGB values from a list.
All the same you should probably save lists of custom colors in a file within
the same folder as your tables. As mentioned before this method only works to
move existing custom color around in a table. The colors have to be created
manually in a new table or exported in by copying a file aleady containing
the colors. It would be nice if we could save these colors to a user
definable pallete for each file, as the standard palette may be fine for
font, but is limited when using shading.
 
S

Suzanne S. Barnhill

Two even easier methods:

1. If you have just filled a cell with a color (it is your last action), you
can use F4 to fill another cell with the same color.

2. On the Tables and Borders toolbar, the Fill Color button will reflect the
last-used color.

I had hoped that copying/pasting format using Ctrl+Shift+C/Ctrl+Shift+V
would work, but apparently not for shading.
 

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