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. Steve Rindsberg 99,176 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2015-12-06T03:06:35+00:00

    OK, understood.  Not many people really need 64-bit Office, but you're the poster-child for it. ;-)

    I don't know whether the problem is 32 vs 64 or Win7/8 vs Win 10, but another approach would be to see if Pixie or a similar program works in your version of Windows.  It doesn't immediately apply colors but at least picks colors up from the screen so you can enter them in the fill dialog box.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-12-06T02:11:52+00:00

    Hi Steve!

    I have the same identical issue... I have called MS Office Support on this and they said they had nothing on record concerning this!

    UGH! Help! I'm a PowerPoint power user and need this to work... Because it hasn't it's made my work on projects considerably LONGER!

    John

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-12-03T16:15:35+00:00

    thanks, but i need Excel/64 for massive spreadsheets I deal with - it's a shame that the 32 and 64 are so inconsistent.

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  4. Steve Rindsberg 99,176 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2015-12-03T15:58:40+00:00

    Steve,

    I just tested this here in Office 365/PowerPoint 2016.  The eyedropper works as expected. 

    Two differences:  I've got the 32-bit version of Office installed, and I'm running it under Win7/64.

    If you like 2016 better than 2013 for other reasons, you might want to try uninstalling then installing the 32-bit version instead of 64-bit.  This might be one of the oddities that have MS still recommending the 32-bit version of Office for most people.

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