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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91 additional answers

Anonymous

2015-12-07T20:38:45+00:00

well, I reinstalled 2016/32 and it works like a champ then reinstalled 2016/64 and its still broken. All things were identical. I have a fleet of identical machines for my company... all /32 installs work and my /64 doesnt. I guess I will wait for Office2018/64 ;-)
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Steve Rindsberg 99,176 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2015-12-07T20:18:21+00:00

This is primarily a users-helping-users forum. Other than the support people who post here from time to time, we're all volunteers. So as Rohn's mentioned, it's not likely that you'll get a direct ack from them about this being a bug.

If we can establish that it always happens in 64-bit 2016 (or in some specific combo of that with Windows version, graphics hardware, etc) then one of us can see that it gets reported. And now that updates for O365 go out on a faster pace, the chances of a fix are better than they once were.

Do you know anyone else with the same version of Office who can test this for you and report back as to whether they see the same problem?

And I agree that having to install VMs et al to solve the problem feels a lot like shooting mayflies with a howitzer.
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Anonymous

2015-12-07T07:32:45+00:00
Acknowledge this as a bug

fix it promptly

it's (just a little) over the top to have to install VMs and run 2 copies of Office for this minor (but important to me) feature.
#1 The chances are one in a million of seeing an acknowledgement of a bug

#2 there are no prompt fixes

Well, no prompt fixes for such a minor issue. It is 64 bit specific, this question is the first time I've seen it mentioned, and frankly, the eyedropper is a trivial feature. That is not many people use it. So, I don't think you'll see it fixed before the next version of Office is released. If then.

Sorry. Your best bet is to go with the VM if you want to use the feature, rather than holding your breath waiting for a "prompt" fix.
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Anonymous

2015-12-06T17:36:04+00:00
thanks for the helpful suggestions, but a bit overkill given that this, very clearly, is a bug in Powerpoint2016/64. I would hope that Microsoft:
1. Acknowledge this as a bug
2. fix it promptly
it's (just a little) over the top to have to install VMs and run 2 copies of Office for this minor (but important to me) feature.
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