Changing fill to gray makes selection box invisible

[Codrus]

Hi,

I have a user who is using 50% gray in Excel 2003 and a similar gray in Excel 2007. In both cases, once you highlight a range and do a gray fill, the selection box disappears so that you cannot see which cell is highlighted.

Has anyone else run into this? Is there a way to change the default selection box color to black? Or is there another workaround for this?

Thanks for any assistance!

 

[BlueHorizon]

Codrus,
By "change the default selection box to black", do you mean change the color of the gridlines?

If so, gridline color changes can be made in 2003 in Tools/Options and in 2007 by clicking the Office Button and clicking the Excel Options button.

HTH,

Best,
Blue Horizon

 

[Lilliabeth]

You do know that if you use any other shade then it will change automatically if necessary, right?

--Lilliabeth

 

[Codrus]

Hi,

BlueHorizon, I am talking about the selection box itself, not the grid lines.

Lilliabeth, yup, I am aware of that fact. The user and their department are very particular about this grey. They have used it as a "highlight" color in a number of their spreadsheets and were disappointed to see the issues in 2003 and further in 2007.

I am hoping that their is a registry hack or something that will allow me to change the default color of the selection box to ALWAYS be black.

Thank you!

Codrus

 

[macropod]

Hi Codrus,

I think a bit of understanding of how Excel works might help here. The 'problem' is nothing to do with Excel 2003 or 2007 - it's the same in earlier versions too.

Why anyone would want to use the one background that provides the least possible contrast for all other colours I don't know. But if that's what they want, maybe the code here will help:

http://www.xcelfiles.com/Excel02.html#anchor_67

[MS MVP - Word]

 

[Codrus]

Macropod,

I was not implying that there was a "problem" with Excel. I am just trying to work around an end-user issue.

The user utilized this color scheme in Office 97 without issue. Unfortunately, that is the era that many of their spreadsheets and templates are from. If it were only a couple of spreadsheets, I would just have them modify their color selection (I guess there is no accounting for taste ). In this case, however, they have approximately 200 spreadsheets with the same type of highlighting.

I will take a look at the link and see if that remedies the request.

Thanks!

Codrus

 

[Codrus]

Macropod,

Thanks for the post. Unfortunately, that link looks like I will have to get them to touch all of their worksheets.

On the upside, I found some excellent code on that site for a direct FTP from Excel, which I needed for another project.

It seems unusual that there is not a simple option other than writing a macro/script to force the currently selected cell to ALWAYS have a black border.

Again, thank you for the post.

Codrus