Exporting Colour Schemes

[timboothby]

Hi,

I need a way of forcing many people throughout my organisation to use
a standard set of colour schemes. We are working with a commercial
printers, and I need to make sure that everyone is using CMYK colour
space within Publisher.

My plan is to set up a range of accpetable colour schemes, then remove
all the default colour schemes to force people to use the correct
ones. There doesn't seem to be any way of exporting schemes within
publisher, so I was hoping I'd be able to find a file somewhere which
stored the schemes I could copy onto all my users PC's. But I can find
such a file.

Does anybody know where the colour schemes are stored?

Thanks,

Tim

 

[Mary Sauer]

What version Publisher?
What version Windows?
Look for a file custcols.scm, this is the file that holds the custom color
schemes.
It is generally in a folder similar to this:
Windows XP
C:\Document and Settings\<<user>>\Application Data\Microsoft\Publisher
Vista
C:\Users\<<user>>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Publisher

It doesn't matter if you create 1 or 10 the custcols.scm doesn't change. The
only way to delete custom color schemes to to delete the .scm file or rename it.

The general color scheme file is in Program files, Office, folder 1033. It is
called pubcolor.scm. I don't know what happens if you rename it to pubcolor.old.
I've never tried.

 

[Rob Giordano \(Crash\)]

You may find something in MSDN
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa269191(office.10).aspx

 

[timboothby]

Superb Mary - thanks very much.

I was close, but I was looking in \Appdata\Local, not roaming. I'd
never have found the one in folder 1033. (Publisher 97 on Vista)

For info, if you rename or remove pubcolor.scm, publisher gives an
error message saying the colour schemes file is missing or corrupt and
to re-run setup. Unfortunately it falls back to a single colour
scheme, the custom schemes go missing too.

Having had a look at the content of pubcolor.scm, I don't fancy my
chances of editing it to remove the unwanted schemes. Too much to hope
that it would have been a nice simple to understand XML file!

But that's great, the key thing for me is being able to distribute the
custcols.scm.

Thanks again.

Tim

 

[Mary Sauer]

As long as you are satisfied then all is well. I appreciate your feedback. I
know now not to rename the pubcolor file.

 

[timboothby]

Ah - I've figured it out. To remove the default schemes, first create
the custom schemes you want, then remove PUBCOLORS.SCM and move
CUSTCOLS.SCM to the 1033 folder and rename it to PUBCOLORS.SCM

You are then left with only your custom colour schemes.

Just thought I'd share this in case anybody else is ever trying to
acheive the same thing I was.

Tim

 

[Mary Sauer]

I'll save this, I am sure down the road someone will have this query. Thanks for
the solution. It truly is appreciated.