Powerpoint Office2016 Eyedropper not working

Anonymous

just upgraded last week to Office2016/64 on Win10 and discovered that the eyedropper in the color picker in PowerPoint no longer works. No matter where on the screen I put the cursor I get a gray color as opposed to the color immediately under the cursor as in Office365/2013/64 Powerpoint

help!

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Anonymous

I, too, had this problem. Ran Office 365 ProPlus "Office Updates", which took PowerPoint from Build 7369.2130 up to 7766.2092, and the eyedropper issue is now non-reproducible on my machine. Seems if you can do the updates, you should be good to go.

For those who might not be able to update Office, or do and still see the issue, here's a workaround that's not too painful: The issue only seems to affect colors in the PowerPoint application; I was able to pick colors with the eyedropper from other apps just fine. (To do this, after activating the eyedropper tool, click anywhere in a PowerPoint slide, then hold and drag the mouse to anywhere else on your desktop; release the mouse button when over the desired color.) So, to pick a color that's on the slide, screenshot the slide, then use the eyedropper to pick the desired color from the screenshot.

Hope that makes sense...

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Anonymous

2016-01-25T19:24:36+00:00

to answer your questions for my configuration:

-Magnifier is set to 100% and not in use when using PPT

-PPT Version 2016, X86

-Windows 10.0.10586.63

-graphic card is Intel HD Graphics 5500

-turning off hardware acceleration had no effect

-I don't readily see a "9 point Segoe UI at xx pixels per inch" reference using the method you describe. Or a "Use Windows XP style DPI scaling"

-display resolution is set to 1920 X 1080.

thanks,

Mark
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Steve Rindsberg 99,176 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2016-01-25T18:39:25+00:00

I suppose it's a minor issue to anyone who never uses the eyedropper, and obviously it's a major deal to anyone who depends on it. The folks at Microsoft wouldn't be following up with these requests for more detail if they weren't interested in fixing the problem.

So in answer to your "Please help", please reply with answers to the questions I included in the post that you're responding to. That will help Microsoft narrow down the problem and with luck, solve it.

Thanks!
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Anonymous

2016-01-25T17:47:47+00:00

Yes, it's not Pri 1, but it is a defect that does matter to some proportion of the population, and as noted here it repros for a number of folks. The bug count in both PPT and Word seems to be rising in proportion to the speed with which new releases are pushed out the door. That makes sense... but at some level these core productivity tools aren't the same as websites.
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Anonymous

2016-01-25T17:16:29+00:00

What proportion of Office / PPT users are professional designers. Probably relatively low. That is why from MS's point of view it would be considered a minor issue.

I think it's already been mentioned, there are 3rd party "eyedropper" tools you can find on the internet. They may not be as convenient as the built in tool, but they will get the job done.
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