You could customize the automatic colours as used by default in charts.

Tools, Options, Colors
look at colours starting in the 6th row and compare with default (non
formatted) colours in your pivot charts

After customizing the palette to your needs hopefully you won't need to
apply your own colour formats.

Keep in mind the palette belongs to and is saved with the workbook. Perhaps
make a template with your customized palette and other common features for
your pivots.

Regards,
Peter T

"JanHDon" wrote in message
...
I have a series of pivot table charts--one for all employees, and
individual
ones. I want to give the projects the same color legend across all the
charts. I've tried changing the legends, one-by-one, then saving the
chart,
then moving to the next iteration, but when I go back to the first chart,
the
colors have returned to the defaults. What am I missing?