How do I create a Custom Colour Pallette?

[Dom Conrad]

I have created a newsletter template for a client and I want to specify a
limited colour pallette of colours that they should keep to for text, lines
and filled shapes. The pallette needs to include 10 RGB colours and their 50%
tints (i.e. 20 colours in all). The document has to work for Word 2000 and
above on the PC. Is it possible to define these colours and have all 20
appear in the colour pallette (More colours?) when they open the template?

Many thanks in advance.

Dom Conrad

 

[Genine]

In a word No. The colour palette in Word uses its own built in colours.

You can enter RGB values for custom colours though, and if you apply these
to text/borders etc and build styles using those colours and/or borders you
could create a toolbar to make the styles easily available to the users.
Genine

 

[Dom Conrad]

Thanks Genine

I'm aware of generating custom RGB colours for fonts, lines and fills and
that the line and fill pallette will hold the most recent 8 custom colours
used. I wanted to know if the pallette would hold more than 8 custom colours.

I'm aware of creating styles for text formatting so I'm interested in what
you mean by "....build styles using those colours and/or borders you could
create a toolbar..." Can you explain what you mean by 'creating a toolbar'?

Many thanks in advance.


Dom

 

[Genine]

Assume you have built your style to use a certain colour text (set by RGB
value) and/or coloured border. To make it easier for the users to find this
style, you can put it on a toolbar. Instead of putting it on to one of
Word's standard toolbars, create a toolbar in your template called something
like "ColourPalette". Then go to the commands tab of the customise dialog
box and click styles in the left hand menu. Find your new style in the list
and drag it to the toolbar. Change the name of the button to something short
enough to display, but long enough to make sense to the users. This way,
they will only have to click a button to use your set colours.

Although your palette will hold the 8 most recently used custom colours,
those 8 colours won't transfer to the other user's PC, and if you use another
custom colour int he meantime, the information on your PC will update
accordingly. It's much better to put the colours into the style in the
template and teach the user to apply the style to get the colour.

I had a similar situation once. One department originally had 10 templates
that were the same apart from the colour schemes, which were all custom
colours to match pantone values. Updating them was a nightmare when fonts etc
were changed for rebranding. I put it all into one template with the correct
layout and then built a toolbar with drop down buttons to allow users to
select the correct style within their chosen colour scheme. It was much
easier to support and maintain, and it was easy for the users to find the
custom colours they needed. It also meant that everyone who used the
template got the right colour and you didn't have to worry about people
typing in the wrong RGB values.