Conditional formatting : hex or dec RGB value contained in other cell

[ChameleonScales]

I would like to set a cell’s color by referring to another cell’s content, such that if the referred cell contains a hexadecimal or decimal number, the colored cell would use that number as its RGB values for its color.

So instead of a 1 dimensional scale like the “Color Scale” in Conditional Formatting, this would, in a sense, be a 3D Color Scale.

Is that possible?

[ChameleonScales]

I apologize for missing the multiple times this question and similar ones have popped up. That said, this answer can serve as an aggregator to the others, since multiple solutions have been provided.

RGB values in Calc

In a LibreOffice Calc sheet I have entered manually some numbers (RGB values), each value in a different cell, horizontally. What I need is: What formula should I type/use in order to get an actual colored cell with the RGB values type in the previous cells? Thank you! rgb-cells.ods

It has also been asked on the OpenOffice forum and some solutions were provided. A very simple one is a little add-on Hubert Lambert made:

https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=98070#p470595

I reupload it here and provide the steps to follow, it’s exactly the same but I just changed the file name’s extension to .ods so AskLibreOffice would let me upload it here :

XBackground_0-0-2.ods

Steps:

• download this ods

• replace its extension to .oxt

• in L.O Calc, go to Tools > Extension Manager

• click on Add

• select the oxt

• restart L.O

• type a hex RGB code code in cell A1 (with or without a hashtag)

• in cell C1, type =BACKGROUND(B1;A1)

• cell B1 should now be colored according to the code in A1

There are other proposed solutions in this forum topic. Feel free to check it out and if you try any, please comment down to let us know how it went on LibreOffice. I don’t really have the time or interest to try them personally since the above solution does it for me.

There’s also this solution which doesn’t seem so handy since you have to write the cell range directly in the macro :

calc function to change the cell background color to an rgb value based on 3 cells : solved

Hi, I have been struggling with trying to write this (my first lo function), so please be understanding of my inexperience. The function should change the background color to an rgb value based on 3 cells. So something like bgcolor(r,g,b) where r, g and b are either values or better cell references. e.g. if I enter ‘=bgcolor(c5,d5,e5)’ into cell f5 it should change the background color of cell f5. function BGCOLOR(red, green, blue) CellBackColor = RGB(red, green, blue) end function I …

Finally, if you’re interested, it’s possible to do it the other way around and get a color code written in a cell based on another cell’s background color:

Get color of text in cell

I got a Calc file which contains data encoded in the color of cells (some cells are red and some are black. These cells indicate different values. Is there a formula to get the color of a cell to extract this information? A simplified example: [Simple example]

How do I determine what color a Calc cell is?

I created a spreadsheet and am trying to continue the color scheme I was using, but I can’t figure out what color I was using for a particular cell. If I look at the cell properties it shows me the actual color, but doesn’t tell me what it’s name is or otherwise indicate what the color is. I can’t seem to find this color in the palette provided when I try to set the background color of a cell, and it isn’t showing it in previously used colors (not sure it was created on the same machine or ver…