Microsoft KB Archive/135559

= PPT: Using Colors in PowerPoint =

Article ID: 135559

Article Last Modified on 8/17/2005

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft PowerPoint 95 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft PowerPoint 3.0 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft PowerPoint 4.0 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft PowerPoint 4.0a
 * Microsoft PowerPoint 4.0c

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This article was previously published under Q135559





SUMMARY
The following information describes how many colors (and what color depths) are available in Microsoft PowerPoint.



MORE INFORMATION
Internally, PowerPoint stores color information for every object using 24- bit (16.7 million colors) color definitions. Therefore, if you insert a graphic that contains 16.7 million colors, and you display it using a 24-bit display driver, you see all the colors.

However, when you run a PowerPoint slide show on a system that has a 256- color display driver, PowerPoint performs Palette Management. This means that PowerPoint sends a palette to the display driver that contains the 256 colors that it needs the most at that one time, and that PowerPoint can send a different palette to the display driver whenever it deems it necessary (usually when changing a slide). As long as you are running a color depth of greater than 256 colors, you won't have to worry about running out of colors. If you are running a color depth of 256 colors, and you have enough different graphics and gradients on a single slide so that the slide requires more than 256 separate colors to display, you may experience color loss, with or without an error message.

