Manage Colors

PPT Productivity PowerPoint add-in has 200+ time saving features. PPT Productivity's Color Toolbar for PowerPoint makes it easy to access the colors from your PowerPoint presentation template. The toolbar lets you select to change a fill color, an outline color or a text color.

You can add custom colors to the Color Toolbar which means you can create an extended Color Palette - perfect for Marketing and brand teams in large organizations. Once you setup custom colors, you can also export your Color Toolbar setup to share with colleagues.

Color Palette Toolbar

PPT Productivity's Color Palette Toolbar makes updating colors in PowerPoint presentations easy.

The Color Toolbar for PowerPoint dynamically updates to include your presentation color palette (the theme colors from the template of your open presentation). You can also make a custom color palette with the Toolbar - add your favorite PowerPoint color schemes, or temporarily add colors you need for a specific slide.

The Color Toolbar saves you time when creating or editing PowerPoint presentations by putting a color palette for slides at your fingertips. Color names and RGB values are displayed when you mouseover a color.

There are four sections or groups on the Color Palette Toolbar:

  • Group 1: Black, white and clear/ no color
  • Group 2: Dynamic - Displays the color scheme from the theme or template of your open PowerPoint presentation
  • Group 3: The ten standard PowerPoint colors
  • Group 4: Displays any colors you choose to add to the toolbar

The Color Palette Toolbar includes shortcut buttons to quickly change the color of text, shape fill and shape outlines or borders. The Color Toolbar can also be used to update tables (the border color updates the borders of all cells).

To apply a color using the toolbar, simply select the font or shape you need to change on your slide and select the relevant color from the toolbar.

You can customize the Color Toolbar for PowerPoint to add colors, to reorder the display of colors, and delete unwanted colors. Color names and RGB values are displayed when you mouseover each color, which makes it easy to distinguish between shades of specific colors.

Updating the color palette on the Toolbar is easy. To add custom colors simply click the + icon and either use the eyedropper, select the color or enter the RGB values. Right click a color on the toolbar to access a delete option. From the Settings gear at the bottom of the Color Toolbar you can access further customizations including to hide the standard PowerPoint colors.

Saving colors to your color toolbar for PowerPoint makes updating presentations fast. Add colors to the toolbar to have them in easy reach - even if you're only using a color for one presentation, you can delete it once you're finished.

Working with a team? Customize the setup of the Color Palette Toolbar and share it (along with other settings) with your colleagues, so your team have the same setup. Read more about sharing PPT Productivity settings across a team.
Productivity Tip

How to copy a color in powerpoint for easy reuse? Use the PowerPoint eyedropper tool at the bottom of the Color Palette Toolbar to quickly select and save a new color to your palette. This PowerPoint color picker is great when trying to match color in powerpoint from a logo or pdf. No need to search for RGB values.

Color Toolbar too big or too small on your screen? Use the settings gear icon at the bottom of the Color Toolbar to make the color tiles in your palette larger or smaller.

The Color Palette Toolbar for PowerPoint is part of PPT Productivity Power Tools - the most feature rich product option. You can try the full set of PPT Productivity Power Tools features by downloading the free 30 day trial.

Customize Color Toolbar

PPT Productivity's Color Palette Toolbar lets you create a custom color palette in PowerPoint, so that all colors you prefer to use are easy to access.

PowerPoint color schemes for your presentation are often determined by the marketing team. But it's not always easy to find the correct color when working in a presentation. The standard PowerPoint theme color supports only 12 colors - 6 color accents, 4 text color variants and 2 hyperlink variants for your template.

But if you have an extended color palette for your brand, PPT Productivity makes it easy to add these colors to your Color Toolbar. You can share your Color Palette Toolbar setup with your team.

Large teams can also request to customize color names displayed, to match enterprise brand guidelines. By default the Color Palette Toolbar also includes the 10 standard PowerPoint colors (dark red, red, orange, yellow, light green, dark green, light blue, blue, dark blue and purple), but you can choose to show or hide these via the Settings gear at the bottom of the Toolbar.

July 2023 update - the Color Toolbar was updated in July 2023 to also support displaying color tints for your PowerPoint Template colors. You can customize the Color Toolbar to display or hide 3 lighter tints and 2 darker tints for each of your 6 standard PowerPoint Accent colors in the PowerPoint template used for your presentation, and for the 2 background text colors.

The settings button at the bottom of the Color Toolbar gives you access to the configuration options.

Productivity Tip

If you almost always use the same presentation template, ensure your template has the color theme correctly set up. Your Presentation template's theme populates Group 2 on your Color palette toolbar, providing easy access to your nominated template colors.

To do this, you need to edit the template .potx file rather than the instance of the template which opens when you select new presentation. Refer to our Color Palette for PowerPoint themes in templates guide for assistance.

Apply fill with outline color

PPT Productivity's Color Palette Toolbar for PowerPoint has a setting option that lets you update both the fill and border / outline of a shape in PowerPoint in a single click.

By default in PowerPoint, changing a fill color only changes the internal color of a shape - you need to change the outline color separately. PPT Productivity enables you to override this. Simply click the gear icon at the bottom of the PPT Productivity Color Toolbar and select the option Set Line with Fill.

If you apply this setting, each time you click the Fill icons on the Color toolbar, both fill and border colors of your selected shape(s) will be set to the selected fill color. Helpful shortcut if your preference is matching shape fill and border colors.

Productivity Tip

Note that if you only want to use the fill and outline color option occasionally, using Ctrl+click when selecting the fill color lets you temporarily override the standard setting and change border color to match. A great alternative if you only want matching shape outline and fill color for some shapes.

Recolor Charts

It's easier than ever to change the color of PowerPoint Charts with the PPT Productivity Color Palette Toolbar.

PPT Productivity's Color Toolbar for PowerPoint makes it easy to update the colors of PowerPoint charts. This feature saves a lot of tiem, particularly if you you're looking to use custom colors that are not in your template theme list. Simply click on the chart element(s) to update and then select your preferred color from the Color Toolbar.

Productivity Tip

Use a lot of charts in your presentations? Read about PPT Productivity's Charts Toolbar.

View RGB color values & names

View PowerPoint RGB color values, HEX value and color names easily on the PPT Productivity Color Palette Toolbar.

This feature was created to support accessibility. Working with close color variants in a PowerPoint presentation can make it challenging to distinguish between the different shades, particularly if you have color vision deficiency.

When you mouseover any color on the PPT Productivity Color toolbar, a tooltip displays the color name, RGB values and HTML HEX Color code.

For colors in your presentations' theme, the RGB mouseover tip will also indicate which theme color setting the color has been set to (for example Theme Accent 3). This makes it easy to update your theme to adjust for which color is used in each accent.

If you have chosen to display tints/ shades for your template theme colors, the shade % will also display eg Lighter 80%

Productivity Tip

Does your organization have custom color names that you'd like to display on mouseover? contact us to discuss configuring the Color Toolbar to display your organizations color names.

Theme Color Tints and Shades

Access Powerpoint Color Theme accent and background colors including tints and shades from PPT Productivity's Color Palette Toolbar.

The Color Toolbar for PowerPoint provides easy access to PowerPoint Color Theme accent colors and background colors from your template, including dark and light tints and shades.

PowerPoint automatically generates tints and shades for your template theme colors - including the accent, background and text colors. You can find these tints and shades when you click on the Shape Fill, Shape Outline or Font color buttons on the Home tab. PPT Productivity makes the tints and shades of your template colors available from the Color Toolbar.

You can set the PowerPoint Color Toolbar to automatically update and show the theme colors for your presentation, or for your slide (e.g. for presentations with multiple themes). Choose to show or hide the 3 light and 2 dark shades of each color.

Productivity Tip

The tints and shades for each powerpoint theme color are identified automatically. This means that if you change your template theme colors, the tints and shades for each accent and background color will be calculated automatically. When saving custom colors to your Color Toolbar you can also choose to display tints and shades.

Share Color Palette with team

Once you have customized your PowerPoint Color Palette Toolbar, you can export your settings to share with colleagues including all of your custom colors.

PPT Productivity add-in for PowerPoint lets you export your settings to share with team members. Your team can easily import the color palette settings, so all team members have access to the same colors for their presentations.

This provides all team members with access to a consistent palette in PowerPoint. Note that you can share your PPT Productivity settings without needing support from your IT team, because team members can simply import a file that you export.

Alternatively - for large organizations, PPT Productivity's team can work with your IT team to deploy a standard palette centrally for your organization along with other addin configurations. Contact us to discuss.

Learn more about PPT Productivity's custom settings and how to share with your team.

Productivity Tip

You can also customize the Format Toolbar and share these settings too.

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