Format Dialogs (Color, Font, Border, Fill)

Created: 2026-08-16 · Updated: 2026-08-18

Wherever PPPTools asks you for a color, a font, a border or a fill, version 2.1 opens its own dialog instead of the Windows ones. This page describes all four dialogs in one place — the individual tool pages link here rather than repeating it every time. The final section, Number Fields With Arrows, reaches beyond the dialogs: it applies to every number field in PPPTools.

The most important difference is not in what you can pick, but in what gets stored: a color can now keep its reference to the theme instead of being frozen as a fixed value. See Theme reference.

The Color Picker

Clicking a color field opens the picker right at the mouse pointer — it behaves like the drop-down of a ribbon color button, not like a window you have to go looking for. Clicking a color selects it and closes the picker; a check mark shows the color that is currently set.

The groups, top to bottom

Looking at a different color scheme

Above the theme color matrix sits a drop-down list. It starts on "Presentation theme" — the normal case, showing exactly the colors PowerPoint offers as well. Below that are all color schemes that ship with Office ("Blue Warm", "Grayscale", "Marquee" and about twenty more). Pick one and the matrix shows its colors.

This is explicitly a preview, not a switch: the presentation keeps its theme, and not a single slide changes because of it. It is useful for seeing what "Accent 2, Darker 25%" would look like in another scheme before you plan a theme change.

If you click a color while a foreign scheme is shown, what gets stored is still the slot, not its color value — so what appears on the slide is the color that slot has in your own theme. The picker says so in its plain-language line: "Viewed in scheme … — the presentation theme applies on the slide."

Theme reference — why a color changes when you switch templates

When you click a theme color, PPPTools does not remember the color value but the slot in the theme — for example "Accent 3, Lighter 60%". If the presentation later switches to a different theme, this color moves along with it, exactly like the colors PowerPoint itself assigns.

If instead you click a standard color, "More colors…", the eyedropper or the hex field, the fixed color value is stored. It stays exactly as it is through any theme change. For palette colors the individual swatch decides: most are fixed values, the swatches of the four design palettes keep their reference.

There is no switch for this — the way you pick decides. So that it is still clear which case applies, a plain-language line sits below the preview:

• "follows the template" — the color changes with the theme.
• "stays exactly like this" — the color is fixed.

Eyedropper

The eyedropper picks up a color from the screen — including outside PowerPoint. After you click it, a snapshot of the screen covers everything; under the mouse pointer a magnifier enlarges the area 10×, so individual pixels can be hit reliably. The hex value is shown below the magnifier.

• Left mouse button — take the color
• Esc or right mouse button — cancel
• Switching to another window also cancels

The eyedropper always returns a fixed color value. It cannot return a theme reference — you cannot tell from the screen whether a pixel came from a theme slot or was set by hand.

Font Dialog

Replaces the Windows font dialog. It contains:

• Font — the list shows every name in its own typeface
• Size — with up/down arrows in steps of 1 pt
• Style — bold · italic · underline · strikethrough
• Position — normal · superscript · subscript
• Case — normal · small caps · ALL CAPS
• Character spacing — in steps of 0.1 pt
• Font color and text highlight — both through the color picker, so with theme reference
• Live preview

Border Dialog

Replaces the previous line dialog and offers considerably more:

• Visible — draw or remove the border
• Color — through the color picker
• Weight in pt — with up/down arrows in steps of 0.5
• Dash style — all 9 entries PowerPoint knows (previously 6)
• Compound type — single · thin-thin · thin-thick · thick-thin · thick between thin
• Transparency — 0–100%, with a slider
• Begin arrow / End arrow — shape and size of the arrowheads
• Preview with real dash pattern, transparency and filled arrowheads

Join type and cap type

PowerPoint's own task pane shows two further settings that you will not find here: the join type (how the corners of an outline are drawn — bevel, round, miter) and the cap type (how the ends of a line finish — flat, round, square).

The reason is not PPPTools: PowerPoint simply does not make these two settings available to add-ins. They can neither be read nor set from the outside.

As a reachable neighbour, the dialog offers the compound type instead — splitting a line into several parallel strokes.

Fill Dialog

Replaces the previous fill dialog, which only knew solid colors and two-color gradients.

• Visible — fill or "no fill"
• Kind — solid · gradient · pattern · texture · picture
• Color and transparency stand on their own, independent of the kind — "just recolor it" and "just make it more transparent" are the most common requests
• Gradient — any number of color stops on a drag bar (double-click adds a stop, + finds the largest gap), each stop with color, position and transparency; linear / radial / rectangular; angle
• Preset gradients — a drop-down with two blocks: at the top the 30 calculated from the theme (6 accent colors × 5 variants, so they follow the template), below the curated PPPTools gradients (fixed colors)
• Pattern · texture · picture with their respective settings
• Preview on a checkerboard background, so a semi-transparent fill reads as transparent rather than merely "lighter"

A chosen preset is a starting point, not a dead end: afterwards every stop can be edited individually. That is why the list resets to its placeholder once applied — the preset has been inserted, it is no longer "in force".

Gradient type "Path"

PowerPoint's own task pane offers four gradient types: linear, radial, rectangular and path. The fourth is missing here — as with the join type, PowerPoint does not expose it to add-ins. Set a path gradient through Format Shape → Fill in PowerPoint.

"Unchanged" — the change mode

The three dialogs for font, border and fill have two operating modes:

• Full mode — every attribute has a value, everything is applied. This is how the dialogs work when you format an object directly.
• Change mode — a check box sits in front of every row. Only the ticked attributes are written, all others are left untouched. This is the mode Find & Change uses: a rule that should only set the font color leaves typeface and size alone.

For border and fill, the Visible switch carries three statements at once and therefore needs no check box of its own:

If a dialog reads from a multiple selection with inconsistent values, the affected check boxes go to "unchanged" on their own — what is inconsistent stays inconsistent until you set it explicitly.

Number Fields With Arrows

Numbers are entered the same way everywhere in PPPTools: the number sits in the field, an up and a down arrow sit right next to it. What started in the format dialogs applies as of version 2.1 to the number fields of the task panes as well — Venn diagram, Puzzle, project plan, layout pane (Multiply and Size), format pane (watermark), Personalize, QR code and Wordcloud.

The step size matches the value : One arrow click moves exactly one sensible step — half centimeters for dimensions, 5 % for transparencies, 0.25 pt for line widths, 1 for counts. The tooltip on the field names the range and the step size.

Limits nudge into range instead of resetting : Every field knows its permitted range. A number above or below it is moved to the nearest permitted one when you leave the field — so your value is not silently replaced by a default.

Comma or point : Both count as a decimal separator, 1,5 and 1.5 mean the same thing. Anything that is not a number at all has no effect: the previous value simply reappears when you leave the field.

Empty is sometimes a statement : A few fields are explicitly allowed to stay empty, because there “empty” means something other than any number — in the project plan, for instance, the legend font size (empty = same as the tasks) and the lane of a task (empty = the plan picks one itself). The first arrow click out of an empty field sets the smallest permitted value.

Where the dialogs appear

Practically everywhere PPPTools asks for a color or a format: Find & Change · Venn diagrams · Wordcloud · Puzzle · QR code · Color samples · Parameterized snippets (@param color, @param line, @param fill, @param font) · the admin color palette · the shape tools in the task pane.

So there is one color picker to learn instead of one Windows dialog per location — and the recently used colors apply across all tools.