Office Color Editor Beta

About this tool

Office Color Editor opens the colour theme stored inside a Word, Excel or PowerPoint file and lets you edit it directly: the twelve theme colours, any extra custom colours kept in the theme, and the list of recently-used colours the file has accumulated. You save an edited copy of the file itself.

When to use it

Use it to correct a brand colour across an entire document without hunting through every shape, to fix a theme that arrived slightly wrong from a designer, or to clear a recently-used colour list that has filled up with someone else's palette.

How to use it

1. Open a Word, Excel or PowerPoint file to read its theme.
2. Edit the theme colours, add or remove extra colours, and optionally clear the recently-used list.
3. Save the file — you get an edited copy and your original is left untouched.

Good to know

• Theme colours are referenced, not copied, so changing one updates every piece of text, shape and chart in the document that follows the theme — which is the point, and also the risk.
• Anything given a fixed colour by hand ignores the theme and will not change; those have to be fixed where they were set.
• Not every format stores extra colours or a recently-used list; those sections only appear when the file actually has them.

Common questions

Will this change colours I set manually?

No. Only colours that follow the theme change. A shape that was painted with a specific hex value keeps that value, which is usually why a document looks inconsistent in the first place.

Is this the same as changing the theme in Office?

The result is the same kind of edit, but here you can see and set the exact values in one place, and it works without Office installed — useful for fixing a template you have been sent.

Is my file uploaded?

No. It is opened, edited and saved entirely in your browser and never sent to a server.