PANTONE® OfficeColor Assistant™ 2.0

[Evan]

Will this plug-in for Office assign Pantone colors and names in PowerPoint?
Or does it just allow you to choose a Pantone color, then automatically
assign an RGB substitute?

 

[Sonia]

It's hard to tell and they don't discuss it on their website and they don't seem
to offer a free trial. However, my guess is that they must do color
substitution. Otherwise I think that it would require that the add-in be
installed on all systems that the presentation is opened on. The best thing is
to write to them and ask them your specific questions.
--

Sonia Coleman
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP Team
Autorun Software, Templates and Tutorials
http://www.soniacoleman.com

 

[Echo S]

Will this plug-in for Office assign Pantone colors and names in PowerPoint?
Or does it just allow you to choose a Pantone color, then automatically
assign an RGB substitute?

I have this add-in.

Basically, it lets you click on a paintbucket or line icon (and I think also
a text icon) on the Pantone toolbar, and that opens up a dialog that has all
the Pantone colors to scroll through and choose from. Apply the appropriate
color according to the Pantone value, then close the dialog.

After that, you can use the paintbucket or line icon in PowerPoint itself
(or double-click the object) to open up the "more colors" color wheel/custom
colors you're used to seeing, and the color will be reported in RGB values.
The add-in might actually report the RGB values, I can't remember for sure.
I don't *think* it does, but I'm not positive.

I haven't tested it on a variety of machines because there isn't a trial
version right now, so I don't know if it reports the same RGB values in PPT
when Pantone colors are applied through this add-in on different systems. (I
would hope it does!) You do not have to have the Pantone add-in applied on
anything other than the authoring computer, though.

I do wish that the Pantone toolbar icons would "hold" the most recently
selected color just as the PPT toolbars do. It drives me nuts to have to go
back and select the same Pantone color more than once. So I usually just
make a swatch on a slide in the presentation, apply the Pantone color via
this add-in, and from there on just use PPT's format painter to apply that
color.

I had difficulty getting my purchase to go thru on the web for some reason,
so I actually spoke to someone at Pantone. I was told that there used to be
a trial version of the software and that there hopefully (probably) will be
one again. It's my understanding that the version of the software that was
recently up there had a bug in it with PPT 2003, and it had just recently
been replaced.

I don't know if this is relevant or not, but I will say that since I've
installed this add-in, I've had to delete my PCB files twice to correct an
issue with PPT suddently starting to not open PPT files when I double-click
them. (PPT wants to throw an error and open in Safe Mode, but it won't open
a presentation via double-click.) I've tried renaming all my *.PPA files
(add-ins) to isolate any potential problem children, and the Pantone add-in
doesn't seem to be implicated. (Then again, *nothing* seems to be implicated
(!!) but *something's* causing my toolbar to corrupt frequently!) However, I
am definitely keeping an eye on this add-in, as I'm not convinced it's not
causing the problem, whatever that problem may be.

I also find the splash screen annoying to wait through; it comes up every
time I open PPT.

 

[Echo S]

On an e-list I subscribe to, someone just mentioned that charts have to be
ungrouped before you can apply the pantone colors to them.

In the interest of thoroughness, thought I'd mention that here.

You can of course derive the RGB value from the pantone add-in and then use
those in the slide color scheme so that it will apply to the chart colors.
But no, the pantone add-in doesn't let you change a chart color directly.