Excel: Where Are My Excel 2003 Colors?

This page is an advertiser-supported excerpt of the book, Power Excel 2010-2013 from MrExcel - 567 Excel Mysteries Solved. If you like this topic, please consider buying the entire e-book.


Problem: We always used the orange fill from the third row second column of the Excel 2003 color dropdown. Where is this in Excel now?

All Excel 2003 colors can be found in Excel today, although it might be difficult to find. Open one of the color dropdowns. This dropdown now shows the theme colors, plus a few basic colors. Skip those and go to More Colors.

  1. More Colors has the old colors

    However, when you get to More Colors, you will find that the good old 40 colors are mixed in with 133 other colors. The tough part is figuring out which one of these colors is the color that you want.

  2. All of the 40 colors are in here, somewhere.

    I've created a workbook with forty worksheets. Each worksheet draws a line from the old legacy dialog to the new dialog, so you can find where the color is located. I wrote a tiny little add-in that brought the old legacy color dropdown back to Excel. If you love the old Excel colors, the add-in is available for just $3 from http://www.mrexcel.com/coloraddin2010.html.