[RESOLVED] Excel RGB colour numbers different between Excel 2007 and Excel 2010

[kriswork]

Hi,

Part of my VB.NET app reads the colour of a VB.Net chart and applies that same colour to a matching Excel chart:

arrChart_Colour(byteChart_Number) = embchartHTCD.ChartAreas(0).BackColor
With arrChart_Colour(byteChart_Number)
    xlchartSingle_Chart.ChartArea.Format.Fill.BackColor.RGB = RGB(.R, .G, .B).ToString

Now all this works fine when I update Excel 2007 charts, but all the colours are wrong with Excel 2010 charts.

I know the RGB colour numbers are somehow different between the 2 versions of Excel as have run into the same problem before with VBA.

I only use a few different colours, so I could just have a case statement to change the colour numbers if I'm using Excel 2010, but I'm hoping that there is a better way of doing this.
Any Ideas?

Thanks

Kristian

[kareninstructor]

Hello,

There is really no better method since there are no functions which spans versions of Excel to keep the same color in the realm of compatibility between two versions of Excel.

[Shaggy Hiker]

I've never looked at this, but it really surprises me. Colors are just 32-bit integers with each byte holding a value for one of the three colors (plus the first byte being the alpha, if it is even included). An RGB value with a certain level for Red, a certain level for Green and a certain level for Blue should be just that across all systems or chaos would ensue. How would the program know that in one case, 255,0,0 should be bright red, but in some other program it should be hot pink?

I could vaguely understand if some named color got a different name in some other program, but an RGB value should be an RGB value across all systems.

Have you gone looking online for some explanation for this change?

[kareninstructor]

Here are two threads I thought would be relevant but are not vb.net yet shed light on the color issue between versions

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2...2007-and-later
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2...color-property

[kriswork]

Hi,
Thanks for the replies - I was hoping I was just doing it wrong. Interestingly, If I load an Excel 2010 spreadsheet which ended up with the wrong colours into Excel 2007 then the colours are still wrong. If I load up the Excel 2007 spreadsheet into Excel 2010 then the colours are right, so Excel seems to know what it's doing, but driving Excel via VB.NET or VBA gets more complicated. I can't complain too much about these little features as it things like this that make my job more colourful!

Kristian