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

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments
Answer accepted by question author
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...

Was this answer helpful?

8 people found this answer helpful.
0 comments

91 additional answers

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Steve Rindsberg 99,176 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2015-12-06T17:06:25+00:00

    Second that suggestion, Agent007.  

    Advantage to VMs: I use VMWare.  It allows me to copy/paste files/date between one running VM and another.  Dual boot wouldn't allow that (if only because you couldn't have two computers running at once).  

    Advantage to dual boot:  The running computer has access to all of the RAM and other memory-related resources of the physical host computer.

    With VMs, it might actually be better to put 64-bit Office on the host/main Windows and boot up a VM with 32-bit Windows only as needed.  Otherwise, Steve'd be running the most resource-hungry stuff, the stuff he needs 64-bit Office for in the first place, in a (most likely) resource restricted VM.

    There.  My seat of pants analysis.  Worth every penny ya paid for it, and full refunds available if ya don't like the results.  ;-)

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2015-12-06T15:15:53+00:00

    You could setup a virtual computer with 64 installed so that you don't have to constantly install/re-install.  If you have Windows Pro, you can user MS Hyper-V, or you can use freeware like VirtualBox.

    If you have enough free space, 20-50GB , on your HD you could set it up for dual boot.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2015-12-06T15:02:06+00:00

    i guess i will install /32 for every day and then selectively reinstall /64 when i need it... really sad that this cant be fixed

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  4. Anonymous
    2015-12-06T03:34:19+00:00

    Hi again... I did try Publisher and its eyedropper tool works fine... Seems to just be PowerPoint...

    Really frustrating...

    Thanks!

    John

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments