RGB colours settings have changed

[Andyt]

Six months ago I set up a template which gave the user a swatch
palette with several colour options and listed with it their RGB
values. The colours are to be used as semi transparent (set to 20%)
box that sit over a background image so the slide text is easily
readable.

Recently it has came to my attention that users can't reproduce the
colours correctly as when they type the values in the reproduced
colour is the wrong. It's not hugely wrong but enough to cause issues.
Now I know PowerPoint is not great for colour but it was ok for the
level we are using it.

In a related issue, if you copy and paste a correctly coloured box
from another file, the transparently levels are corrupted and settings
change to 50% on the formatting palette but go solid on the actual
box. Also the RGB settings are not displayed when you go to the RGB
sliders in the more colours options.

I have not seen anything like this and it looks like it is not
PowerPoint Version dependent as I have seen this on a few different
versions.
We use Macs and have Office 2004 and I have seen this problem on
versions from 11.3.5 to 11.5.5.

Once again when the template was created 6 months ago it worked fine
but more and more people are reporting this problem and I have it
appear on my machine to.
Do I need to rebuild the template from scratch as the it is corrupted
or is there a software issue?

Thanks

Andy

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Six months ago I set up a template which gave the user a swatch
palette with several colour options and listed with it their RGB
values. The colours are to be used as semi transparent (set to 20%)
box that sit over a background image so the slide text is easily
readable.

Recently it has came to my attention that users can't reproduce the
colours correctly as when they type the values in the reproduced
colour is the wrong. It's not hugely wrong but enough to cause issues.

Wrong how, exactly?

For example, does the color as printed vary from a standard color?
Does the view on screen differ from a standard color?

What's the standard you/the users are comparing it to?

It'd probably be useful to mention the OS X version you're using (and
whether it's the same as the other users who've reported the problem;
and whether the problem appeared coincident with any Office or OS
updates).

 

[Andyt]

Thanks for the reply and I will try and explain more.

We mainly have Tiger as our OS except for the odd machine and which
version of PowerPoint depends on who has bothered to run the MS update
but as I said, it have been seen on a number of versions. We don't use
Office 2008 for the simple reason of cost.

The problem is on screen (forget about printing) and the difference in
colours is not huge but noticeable. Nor is it a screen calibration
issue as you can open an older presentation and get the correct colour
and the RGB and transparency sliders are showing the correct settings.
Open the template and the same colours are not reproducible by either
copying from the swatch (as the transparency settings and RGB corrupt)
or by typing the numbers in the directly. Also the tiny colour
swatches that appear on the PowerPoint Fill colour floating palettes
do not show the correct colours.

My current thinking is the Template file that was pushed to everyone's
machine some has been corrupted as the working file that the template
was created from is ok and shows no sign of the problems.