"Peter T" <peter_t@discussions wrote in message ...
Peter -
Thanks for confirming that I wasn't just imagining things. I'll
have to check out the shape objects. I gather from your post that
there is a Windows color palette in the background which shows through
in some undocumented ways.

Have a good day

-John

p.s. - Sorry that us Americans have replaced "colour" by a less
colorful word.

John,

In charts applying color index's 57/8 & 59 applies automatic (typically)
white & black as set by your system. Cannot apply these to all chart items.
When you return these Excel matches to the closest colours in the palette,
by default 1 is black and 2 is white. If you customize your palette, say
"move" black & white to different palette positions or change your system
colours you will see what I mean, and get different index's returned.

Probably better to avoid using these numbers except as SchemeColors for
automatic black & white, if/when appropriate.

With shapes, apart from the 56 palette colours you can apply most system
colours with ScemeColor 64 to 80 (but not to text).

Regards,
Peter

"John Coleman" wrote in message
om...
Thanks for your reply - but I fail to see how looking at documentation
will help in understanding undocumented behavior. My original code
assumed 56 indices, but Excel itself is what is doing something wierd
with indices 57-59.

-John Coleman

"Tom Ogilvy" wrote in message
...
Excel only supports 56 colors. xlnone is a special case.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/149170/EN-US/
Sample Visual Basic Code to Create Color Index Table

--
Regards,
Tom Ogilvy

(snip)