Powerpoint Office2016 Eyedropper not working

Anonymous
2015-12-01T17:51:55+00:00

Hi

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!

Microsoft 365 and Office | PowerPoint | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2017-06-26T15:35:44+00:00

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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  1. Anonymous
    2015-12-21T08:26:39+00:00

    Just to add confusion.

    In the original post the eyedropper appeared to be showing the default application background 25% Gray

    Can the OP try changing the view to dark gray (50%) in options and see if the eye dropper reflects this

    Oh and it works as expected here too in all setups.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-12-27T17:23:14+00:00

    I'm having the same issue as Steve Z. except I'm running PowerPoint 2013. My setup is 64-bit Win10, 32-bit Office 2013. The eyedropper only shows a dark gray/blue (a color I used shortly before the issue started). Eyedropper stopped working after an update ~2 weeks ago.

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-12-28T16:32:07+00:00

    Nearly every day I check for an apply a Office16/64 update with no joy on this issue. Office16/32 works like a champ so it's not my video card, driver, Win10 or any other nonsense... it's a /64 issue plain and simple

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-12-29T00:38:11+00:00

    My problem coincided with my 64bit Windows Upgrade but eye dropper doesn't work with the 32 or 64 bit version of Office 2016. I've had a lot of time with MS Office Support with numerous reinstalls including complete harddrive reformatting and Win10 clean install but still no Eyedropper. I'm convinced it's a Win10 Upgrade problem

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