Transform Your Color Themes to Create
Millions of Professional Color Combinations
For Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and Access

by Charley Kyd
Microsoft Excel MVP

Here's why you need millions of color combinations...

If you're like most Excel or other Office users, you want to create great-looking results. So you need great-looking color combinations. This is easy to do if you always remember... 

It's much easier to recognize  great color combinations than to create  them!

Here's what I mean...

Most of the following charts use Office's Essential color theme. (The plaid swatch is also from Excel, but I'll tell you about it in a minute.) Because I designed these charts to suggest color ideas for my reports, notice that they test two backgrounds each.
 

This set of charts shows an ugly color combination, so let's see what other options the Essential color theme can give us.
In the Kyd Palette controls, I click Standardize, then Randomize.
We now have much better results. Because I might want to use these colors, I save the workbook under a new name. To see other ideas, I Randomize again.
This is another good combination. Again, I save the workbook under a new name. Then I Randomize.
Whoops! Another ugly version.  (Clicking Randomize often does return ugly results.) I quickly Randomize again.
This also is pretty good. But let's try another color theme...
I apply the Copper River color theme from IncSight Colors, then click Standardize and Randomize to get these results. I save the workbook under a new name. Then I Randomize.
Here's another good result. In fact, I'm getting so many good results, it's hard to stop!

The Default section shows that some Accent colors are very light (have tall bars) and some are very dark (have short bars). This wide variation keeps the colors from being completely interchangeable. But we can make colors interchangeable by standardizing their luminosity (lightness), as the Standardized column illustrates.

In just a few minutes I discovered several great color combinations, along with a few stinkers. But the good combinations were much better than any combination I could have created on my own; and I could ignore the stinkers.

Here's how to assign great color combinations in your programs that use Office color themes:

1. Begin with a color theme you like in Excel.
2. Assign acceptable theme colors to your workbook.
3. Randomly rearrange your theme's colors to change your workbook's color combinations.
4. Choose a great color combination when you see it.
5. If you don't find a great color combination, choose another color theme; standardize it; and then randomize it as needed.
6. When you find a combination you really like, save it as a custom color theme for use in any program that uses the color themes first introduced in Office 2007.

Until now, you haven't been able to take these steps. If you had tried, some of your light colors would have turned dark when you changed color themes, and your dark colors would have turned light.

This is because the luminosity (lightness or darkness) varies significantly among ordinary Office theme colors, and also within the Accent colors for any one color theme...as the table at the right illustrates.

However, when we standardize the luminosity of Excel's color themes, the themes and their colors truly become interchangeable, and we quickly can find the professional-looking color combinations we need.

A Quick Introduction to Standardized Colors

To better understand color standardization, take a look at this color palette, which shows Office's default color theme.

The top row of colors in a palette like this contains the base colors. Microsoft calls the first two base colors (which are typically white and black) Background 1 and Text 1. The next two are Background 2 and Text 2. And the remaining six colors are Accent colors 1 through 6.

The colors below the top row use luminosity (lightness or darkness) values that are a fixed percentage of the base's value. So when we lighten or darken a base color, we lighten or darken the colors linked to it.

Kyd Palette for Excel 2007 and 2010 adds three buttons to your Ribbon in the Page Layout tab. You'll use Standardize and Randomize most often.

When you standardize your palette's colors, you set the base colors of Background 2 and Text 2 each to a specified luminosity value. And you set the luminosity of all the base Accent colors to one single value.

Using this approach gives you access to millions of interchangeable color combinations. Some of these combinations are really ugly; but many are outstanding!

The Advantages of Interchangeable Colors

Having interchangeable colors gives you two significant advantages:

First, you can apply any Excel theme easily, because your light colors stay light in your report when you change themes, and your dark colors stay dark. Just this advantage gives you more color options than you've ever had before.

Second, you get massively greater color options for each theme. Here's how...

• The eight colors in a theme that aren't typically black or white can be arranged in as many as 40,320 ways. Each time you click the Randomize button, you randomly apply another of those 40,320 color combinations to your report.
   
• Microsoft Office offers 40 built-in themes, and IncSight Colors offers 35 more. So 75 times 40,320 combinations per theme gives you 3,024,000 possible color combinations.
   
• The Plaid Palette workbook, which I normally include with my add-in, gives you four sets of color options (four plaid swatches) per color combination, for a grand total of 12,096,000 color options that you can use in your reports.

So what's the Plaid Palette workbook?

The Plaid Palette Workbook

If you've already assigned theme colors to your Excel report, you can use the Randomize command in Kyd Palette to generate many better color combinations.

But if you're designing a new report, or if you're looking for outstanding color themes for Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Access or other programs that use Office color themes, you'll probably find it easier to use the Plaid Palette to find those colors.

I created the Plaid Palette figure entirely in Excel. I did so because I needed a quick way to evaluate a few of the many color combinations that every Office color theme offers.

Here's the Plaid Palette in action:

Apply the Essential theme then click Standardize...	Click Randomize...	Click Randomize...
The Plaid Palette workbook includes a worksheet with these four plaid color swatches. Each time you change your color theme, or randomize it, the plaid swatches change to show four ways to use the new version. Here, for example, I assigned the Essential theme and standardized it. Then I clicked Randomize to display the other results.

When you find a plaid swatch that looks promising, you can see how it might be used in a report. The sets of charts and the larger plaid swatches at the top of this page all come from additional worksheets in the Plaid Palette workbook.

Using Kyd Palette with Colors from IncSight Dashboard Templates

IncSight DB and QnE both use color palettes that are specially designed for those dashboard reports. Because the color palettes are specially designed, they're not used easily in other reports.

But now, with Kyd Palette, you can use your IncSight color themes anywhere you would use a normal Office theme. You just apply any IncSight theme you like to any report, standardize it, then use it like any other color theme...just as I did in the last two sets of charts above.

You also can save your new custom theme for use in PowerPoint, Word, Access, and other programs that use Office color themes.

Kyd Palette Tools

When you install the add-in, it inserts the Kyd Palette group in the Page Layout tab of your Ribbon, as shown here. The add-in also gives you access to the Tools dialog below. The numbered areas near the dialog refer to these explanations:

1. Set Luminosity. By default, when you choose Standardize, Kyd Palette sets the luminosity of your colors to the values shown in this figure. You can adjust these values to lighten or darken all three color categories. Not only do these adjustments give you great control over the lightness of your report's colors, it allows you to adapt your report's luminosity to the differences among color printers and monitors.

2. Standardize and Randomize. The buttons in this section perform the same tasks as those in Excel's Ribbon, shown above. That is, they make color themes truly interchangeable and allow you to see your report using millions of color combinations.

3. Copy Colors From... Suppose you create a great set of colors in one workbook, and you want to use them in another workbook. This tool lets you copy colors from any open workbook to the active workbook. (If this tool seems familiar, it's because Excel 2003 had it, but it was removed in Excel 2007.)

4. Save Color Theme. After you find a color combination you like, these controls allow you to save the combination as a custom theme that you can use in any program that uses Office color themes, including Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and Access.

However, if you only want to use the current theme in your current workbook, there's no need to save the theme, because the current colors are saved with your workbook. Of course, if you send your workbook to others they'll see your new color theme automatically.

5. Help Button. When you click the Help button, the dialog expands to show the Quick Help section. Then, when you hover your mouse pointer over any of the buttons in the dialog, the Quick Help area displays information about that command. 

Again, it's much easier to recognize great color combinations than to create them. And my Kyd Palette offers the only way to display so many great color combinations so quickly and easily in your Office programs.

Introductory Offer...Get Plaid Palette Plus for Free!

The figure below shows the 25 swatches offered with Plaid Palette Plus, which sells for $24.95. This version gives you more than six times the color combinations that Plaid Palette does.

The workbook also includes larger swatches, charts, fills, and text for each of the 25 swatches in the plaid palette. For example, the figure at the right shows the additional support for the second column of swatches in the plaid palette on the left above.

For a short time only, I'm including Plaid Palette Plus with Kyd Palette. You get more than six times the number of color combinations for the same price.

Here's What You Get

Here's what you get with Kyd Palette during this introductory offer:

• The Kyd Palette add-in, which delivers millions of color combinations to Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Access, and other programs that use Office color themes.
   
• A 12-page manual that explains how to install the add-in, provides information about Excel colors that you probably didn't know, and teaches you how to use Kyd Palette.
   
• A free copy of the Plaid Palette Plus workbook, which currently sells for $24.95.
  
  (Note: Plaid Palette Plus normally ships with a standardized workbook for each of Office's color themes. I'm not including those workbooks, because you can standardize any of the Office color themes with a click of a button...which is how I created the workbooks in the first place. But if you really want those workbooks after you get Kyd Palette, just drop me a note and I'll send them to you.)
   
• A 3-page manual that explains how to use Plaid Palette Plus.
   
• A discount of more than 30% off the normal price.

During this introductory period, you get nearly $100 worth of software for only $39.95. Get Kyd Palette now, before the introductory offer expires...

Get Kyd Palette now and Save 53%!!

	I'm never satisfied unless you are more than satisfied. So here's my simple "no Small Print" guarantee. Try my add-in today and put it through the ringer. Use it in your reports and presentations for 12 months. You be the judge. If my add-in doesn't deliver everything I've promised, or if you're unhappy with it for any reason, just let me know and I'll immediately give you your money back. I have no problem making this iron-clad guarantee because I've used Excel from day 1; so I know my techniques work. Fair enough?	Terms and Conditions Availability: Guarantee: Licensing: Excel Version: Credit Cards: Instant download. One-year, unconditional. One work copy plus one personal copy. New Excel Only (Excel 2007 and after)