Comments on: Sheet Tab Colors

By: Melanie

Melanie — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 21:28:00 +0000

I thought it was just me but apparently lots of people don’t like the washed out look. Too bad there is not a workaround.

By: JG

JG — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 07:33:00 +0000

I agree with JT. I often use Ctrl+left click on several tabs to make edits to several tabs at once. But this new coloring makes it difficult to tell which tabs are actually being edited. Not a helpful change to Excel 2007.

By: Tushar Mehta

Tushar Mehta — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 22:24:00 +0000

Excel 2007 and 2010 have a color scheme that is a *superset* of Excel 2003.

Right-click on a sheet tab then hover over 'Tab Color >' In the color choice pop up the theme colors are in the top section. Just below that section is the 'Standard Colors' section. Below that is the 'Recent Colors' section and below that are the 'No Color' and 'More Colors' buttons.

If the existing theme colors don't work for you and then 'standard colors' don't work for you and the 'Recent Colors' don't work for you, make your own color with the 'More Colors' button.

One of the below is from Excel 2003 the other from Excel 2010.

By: Karim Sumar

Karim Sumar — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 15:28:00 +0000

I completely agree with most of the comments about Tab Colour being washed out. I had hoped for a fixed to Standard Solid Colours in Office 2003, but cannot find it in 2007. If Microsoft is listening, please change this or at least offer an AddIn to have solid colours. There has to be some genious who can write a simple code macro to change the colours. Sometimes Microsoft tries to be cleaver by introducing enhancements which on closer inspection are nothing more than cosmetic degradation. I use the colour tabs a lot. Eg Red incomplete, Orange part reconciled and Green completed. Blank on White as Master File. I also think the Ribbon is too big at the top and it should have allowed users to customise the bar, after all I, never use the the “watch window” in formulas tab what the point.

By: Brian Hazeldine

Brian Hazeldine — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 22:30:00 +0000

It seems I can’t improve the readability of Excel 2007, so off to Open Office I go! I’ve only used 2007 a little bit (my government employer is still with 2003) and at home I thought it was something I’d get around to fixing one of these days. Like many others, I don’t have perfect colour vision, and I prefer black and white (or white on blue, or even green on black if I’m being really nostalgic for CPM86) if I get the choice – pretty interfaces are for kids (and software designers who don’t actually have to work with their products). I don’t suppose anybody will take any notice of this comment, but it makes me feel better!

By: Warren

Warren — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 14:37:00 +0000

I would like to add my voice to the tab color concern. This is one of the first things I noticed with 2007. I was initially thought that microsoft had added some tab color options but after realizing that my ability to read the tabs was heavily comprimised, I tried to find out how to change them. As we all know now, you can't and that was a dissapointment. Readable tab colors are a useful tool for me and I wish that microsoft would correct this user interface error by either providing the option to choose solid or abandon altogether the washed out look.
How do we get this message to Microsoft and will they listen and take action?

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 01:05:00 +0000

White is the only tab color that eliminates the glossy effect. At least you can read the text more easily. Please someone post how to fix this!

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 01:02:00 +0000

I second (third) what CPA & JT are saying: How the heck do you turn off the glassy glossy 3D effect on the tabs? It is so hard to read and work with multiple highlighted sheets (tabs). Please please please someone figure out how to change this back to a simple flat solid color like in excel 2003.

By: CPA

CPA — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 22:15:00 +0000

Like the last poster, I was hoping to find a way to turn off the glossy feature to the tabs.

I thoroughly use tab colors as I work with worksheets that contain a significant number of tabs (budget models primarily).

My biggest problem is that I am having problems distinguishing if I have highlighted the tab or not. I often highlight multiple tabs. Highlighted tabs look far too close to the standard glossy tab color.

By: JT

JT — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 23:08:00 +0000

I came here hoping for information on how to turn off this glassy effect on the tabs. I use colored tabs like some of the other posters do - to easily see what category different tabs fall under when I'm scrolling through a workbook.

I don't mind the new colors, but the glass/highlight effect is very distracting. What's worse, with most of the colors it's hard to quickly see what tab is selected. And try selecting multiple tabs at a time - it's next to impossible to see which tabs are grouped with the glass effect. I'd still like to use colored tabs but at this point I'm ready to turn them all black just for some contrast on selected tabs.

Has anyone seen a way to turn off this effect?