Microsoft KB Archive/198330

= PPT2000: Colors Appear Wrong On Low Color Displays =

Article ID: 198330

Article Last Modified on 7/12/2001

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft PowerPoint 2000 Standard Edition

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This article was previously published under Q198330





SUMMARY
The following information describes how many colors (and what color depths) are available in Microsoft PowerPoint and what happens when a presentation contains more colors than can be displayed accurately given a systems display settings.



MORE INFORMATION
Internally, PowerPoint stores color information for every object using 24- bit (16.7 million colors) color definition. 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. 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.

