Unable To Change Font Color Using Mouse

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#1

Hi. I’m using LibreOffice 7.2.1.2. I have problem changing font color, both in calc and writer. Here is my problem description.

I select / hi-lite cell(s) containing text, then I click font color icon and click desired color. It doesn’t work. Both in calc and writer.

I Select / hi-lite cell(s) containing text, then I open Format menu, then I choose cell ( format cell ), then click font-effect tab, then click desired color in Font Color section. It doesn’t work too.

It works when i choose the color by moving “cursor / pointer” in color pallet using arrow button in keyboard.

If this is not a bug, please help me to fix this.
Thanks.

#2

When you are in Calc, do you have View > Value Highlighting, Ctrl+F8, selected? If that is highlighted in the menu you will only see black for text, see Value Highlighting in Help.

Possibly, your user profile is damaged. Does opening LibreOffice in Safe Mode (Help > Restart in Safe Mode) solve the problem? If it does, then back up your current profile and reset it using one of the methods in the linked page.

#3

Value highlighting is unchecked, I have tried to restart in Safe Mode, and reset all configuration to factory settings, but that did not solve the problem. By the way, thanks for your help.

#4

Please tell us:

  • which operating system you are using?
  • from where you downloaded LibreOffice?
  • in which file format you save
    a) the Calc files?
    b) the Writer files?

    Thank you.
1 Like
#5

My guess then is that you have

  • High Contrast set in your operating system
  • In LibreOffice Tools > Options > Accessibility > Options for high contrast appearance you have ticked one or both boxes Automatically detect high contrast mode of operating system, Use automatic font colour for screen display.

HighContrast
HighContrast1060×598 17.9 KB

EDIT:
After testing the above it was uncertain how to get the colour back in LibreOffice. I had to tick and untick the options and restart LO, untick and then Apply then OK. Eventually, the colour came back but just unticking the LO options and OK did not immediately change the screen text to coloured.

HighContrastRemoved
HighContrastRemoved892×347 17.2 KB

#6

Yes.
It will be helpfull to have a screenshot.

Will Options for high contrast appearance not be reset after that?

#7

It could still be operating system (unknown); in Windows High contrast settings it seems that you can define text colour.
I didn’t investigate too deeply as I find High contrast display somewhat disorientating and it causes problems for other programs, such as XnView

#8

Debian 10 linux operating system. LibreOffice downloaded from Index of /tdf/libreoffice/stable, the nearest mirror for me.

#9

The same here for Calc+Writer, unable to fix with above.
Version: 7.2.1.2 / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 87b77fad49947c1441b67c559c339af8f3517e22
CPU threads: 4; OS: Linux 5.10; UI render: default; VCL: kf5 (cairo+xcb)

#10

Had the same issue with that version. I downloaded and installed v.7.2.3.1 → problem gone

#11

I am on LO(7.2.4.1) (x64) WIN7 and I can only get rid of the problem if I operate in Safe Mode.
Problem with that is if I restart LO… all my setup is gone in vapors, I must redo the setup.

Trying to see how to keep the setup, maybe adding a bunch of command line switches in the shortcut! LOL

I have snooped around and figured out that a lot of the posts dealing with Styles do not apply, none of it worked for me…

I am now working on how to fully understand how the styles and formatting are handled… there is a finicky hierarchy that could affect this.

Styles are stored internally(bin-readable files) and in different locations… like the Appdata roaming folder…

Depending on the scenario may or may not appear in the manage templates layout and or completely disappear from storage device!
I find myself copying these files to a BACKUP folder so that I can recover when they disappear… this is a bit KLUDGY! to say the least.

All of it, extremely painful, due to the fact that like MS software, Open Office software, … LibreOffice is still stuck using horrendous minute tickers one must use a bow and arrow to aim at! …and in LO, many icons are undecipherable. Many do not provide an ON/OFF visual… can’t tell if a feature is on or off.
I had to juggle from one Icon Style to another crisscrossed with the User Interfaces and found ONLY ONE combination that was decently enough legible.

I gave up on Open Office long ago, and never gave it a chance, banned from my mind! I got sucked in with the NEW NAME (LO) and gave it a try… ran into a myriad issues and pushed to see if I could make use of it… I was able to get around everything(OOPs! read on).

I don’t use but a small count of the features… and was able to get near success, and now this out-of-the-blue show destroyer formatting fail crap!

Still working on it… not given up yet…

#12

Ok, it is very understandable that you needed to climb the hill-o-frustration :face_with_raised_eyebrow: but can you share with us some details on what you have tried exactly. For example, have you:

  1. Reset your user profile? If Safe Mode always works, this sounds like a really likely fix.
  2. Tried toggling the graphics options under Tools>Options>LibreOffice>View?
  3. Considered a different screen resolution?
  4. If you have a 4K monitor, Windows (I think 7, certainly 10) has a setting for telling software that it should make things bigger so they aren’t ‘horrendous minute tickers’. [I agree, btw, especially about the More box on MS Ribbon panels.] I’m on Linux, or I’d look it up. This setting does not defeat your 4K, it just tells software to make text and icons relatively bigger so they don’t turn tiny.
  5. As mentioned above in this thread, looked for high-contrast settings in Windows?

Styles would seem to have little to do with your situation, if it is similar to the Original Question.

1 Like
#13

@ Joshua thank you for your suggestions.


When I say ‘you’, please know to interpret it as a ‘general you’, or ‘one’, (as ON in French) as needed…
If you were facing me, voice, you would see that I am calm collected…
…to use a crummy corporate expression, solution oriented!


NO, I AM NOT FRUSTRATED! I am feeding back what is wasting my time and millions of others, so perhaps if you see it enough times, you will realize you need to improve. NOTHING I expose is aimed at or out of frustration, only constructive talk that does not attempt to avoid the feeling of frustration(sounds contradicting, think about it!), in order to keep it as a pressure factor, an emphasis… wake up geeks, you are not the only grand thinkers on Earth.


Whether I am good enough or NOT at my wording, is not the point.
By the way, I am a GEEK… been programming since 1978!


Now back on the details.
Indeed I provided the clue on the safe mode because I feel that is a major clue and I see, so do you!


~tilde (Remember this tilde paragraph)
This was working on my current windows setup just a few days ago.
I am on the same machine, configuration untouched.
All my other software working as ever, all good.
Going into the OS setup does not show to be a good idea, but just to be fair we can take a look at a very limited count of items.


If anything would become a show stopper for me to abandon this LO TREK, (been on it for about a month), that would not be the the issue I thought I would be facing.


The problem just propped up as I was using LO without issues, except for the invisible/hard to see Icons…
Thus I went in the Options to set either colors and/or Icon Styles.


You must not ignore the fact that most of us who attempt to use the software are not seasoned experts at knowing the applications flow, and their ‘idiosyncracy’… since they hardly follow strict conventions, are all different. Thus we are left with massive time-consuming trial and error of umpteen combinations, trying to figure out what geek behind it decided was the way to think it and design it.


This not the first post thread I visited nor the only avenue where I searched for the solution… and I clearly remember threads that sent me into a rabbit hole of templates/styles… and I stated in my previous post, I had no results in that direction…
But not knowing how the software in its engine constructs everything… I kept/keep it in mind, but went on to other paths.

  1. Reset User profile? where?
    I have hit the various Reset buttons to find they are non-intuitive, contextual in some places, not in others.
    I gave up trying resets, perhaps I did not hit THEE one that would fix this. Any precise clue? - telling me to go in one section and try the various options is of little help… I can do trial and error as I have already done.
    and that is a nightmare of listing separately on a pad what combo was tried and what it demolished… etc.
    It’s like trying to tune an old legacy carburetor on an old car
    User Interface/Icon Style/Colors/… one demolishing the other as we try!


    As far as I remember I did reset that Icon Style panel.
    …and BOOOM much of what was visible is now total blur of grays and blacks that are NOT legible, unless one uses a looking glass.


    … had to redo the setup… and there is NOTHING; intuitive NOR explicit, it is all trial and error. …as much as I appreciate the good work you folks are doing, I mince not my words… this is ridiculously poor design.


    If I was on that team, I would start some serious classes on UI design and blow all that crap out, and replace it with straightforward intuitive AND explicit approach… surely it is no easy task! I know the pain.


    Much of the black-boxing in UI interfaces today is becoming dangerous as the geeks try to implement it WAAAAY too much and on devices like automotive controls… that are bound to cause disasters. (Uber, Tesla, French super plane, without a manual override crashes on maiden take-off!)


    I find myself having to halt and think about how something is black-boxed in the UI interface before I have to hit the proper trigger.
    so, Mr. Designer who tries to think for me, how are you helping me if I have to practically hesitate on so many moves… learn the power of EXPLICIT when it counts, in the proper scenarios instead of trying to be too clever!?


    Now if one could SAVE the setup and have it accessible in a text file to see how everything is configured, that would be what I understand every piece of software would provide along with the 1 point million options one must try to rediscover in a giant UI bucket of buckets of Options…
    You know, not a million buckets to remember… but ‘DICTIONARIZED’. Then it would be easy to revisit everything and to reload a setup instantly.

  2. I have done that, and thought I might prepare a truh-table to create a list of the myriad possibilities.
    If I understood profoundly what each these options actually do and how they interact in the LO engine, I might be able to key on the combination that is the sweet spot. May be there is a reset button that brings that entire panel back to factory? Hopefully NOT the entire Options setup!
    …and I have not already been there.

  3. My screen resolution is optimal for my setup… messing with that means spending more hours in an area of the OS that is also of the same type of nightmare. It took me a long time to adjust everything the best it can be in my scenario. …and amazingly, it got down to the nub, only a minimum of scenarios to accomplish the task as best as possible, not 100% success.
    Nope, that is not the answer… but not ruling it out completely. ~tilde

  4. I will visit the WIN7 options, and do some simple single trials on that… but I remember dealing with that long ago, and I set it on my list of hopelessness. ~tilde

  5. same a 4. moot. …but I will give it a minor shot… ~tilde


    I am starting to fully agree with your last statement. I was just thinking that the formatting may be intertwined with the hierarchy of styles where one prevails over another, like Direct Formatting is perceived by the software as a singled out more local and indeed separate from the formatting enforced by the various styles levels… not ruling it out, yet.


    Thank you,
    hope to have helped you to generate more precise clues.


    Note: this forum tool wastes 1/2 the screen to show me what I am typing in duplicate, while what I really need to the side is YOUR post… and I have to constantly grab another tiny trigger to slide the display pane up and down to see what should be in front of my eyes by default… no, no, no… constant KLUDGES in all software/setups even after all these years of history.
    A preview, if needed on the screen concurrently, should have a button to force it that way, otherwise the default should be preview on demand.


    If their is an option in this forum tool, it should be changed. I could make a discipline of screen real-estate on the University Curriculum and make a living at improving UI designs! There are more issues on this screen layout, but we are not here for that, are we?


    …I reduced the zoom so it became easier, no longer need to slide up and down constantly, but at the cost of eye wear! …and still, at times must slide display pane…
#14

Can someone tell me why the preview shows blank lines as typed but the post is all jammed up together, no blank space?

I edited the post and forced hard end-of-line(Enter) (NOT shift Enter), waste of time, no difference!
t.y.

#15

Reset profile is handled in the link for User Profile given in EarnestAI’s first comment to the Original Question. On that page it is under “Manual Procedure” or something much like that.

#16

yes I had looked for ‘Value Highlighting’, but I have no such option?

I have tried to open up all the options to see if it was in a deeper hierarchy, to no avail!

Is that one of those black-boxed items that only shows under certain scenarios!?


UPDATE: i now know why… that option is only in Calc not in the Writer

#17

Ok… hold off on suggestions, I may have the answer… testing now.


UPDATE: You may skip this post, it is moot, in view of the resolution stated in the posts below


UPDATE01:
hmmm the configuration files are many in many places.


I could bury myself in this mess for days… may eventually find the culprit, which I suspect maybe the ‘config’ area in this land of acres and acres.


C:\Users\userO\AppData\Roaming\LibreOffice\4\user\config\soffice.cfg\modules\swriter


…but without logic, it’s a crap shoot!

  • looking at date/times to see what shows recent modification, though folder may show a recent date/time as in a few minutes ago… nothing in it.


    QUESTIONs:
  • Can you provide one example on a specific setting change?
    ** and what step saves the setting?
    ** and what file will reflect that setting?


    I have tried to save the document after making some specific changes that I could track… saw no change in the XML!
#18

This is not “kludgy”, this is safety. When you have valuable documents, always make backups, at least as version checkpoints. You say you’re a “geek”. Think of your writing work the same as software development (it is “soft”, isn’t it?): you work on the “master” branch and fork version branches. Thus if you have any trouble on the master (by your own mistakes or bad tricks from OS, hardware, bugs, …), you can checkout some version branch and restart with minimal loss.

I noticed that in question and solutions, blank lines are kept, while in comments they are squeezed to a mere line break. Workaround is to add an HTML <br> where you want some inter-paragraph spacing.

#19

HA! SUCKsess!!!

Zapped everything (except the extensions folder) that was under:
file:///C:/Users/UserO/AppData/Roaming/LibreOffice/4/user/
and reloaded LO in normal mode…

First document I am trying to open, this:
Error loading BASIC of document file:///C:/Users/UserO/AppData/Roaming/LibreOffice/4/user/basic/Standard/script.xlb/:
General Error.
General input/output error.
I know why! …it crashed on the extensions folder in the user profile… but it left my color settings and UI settings intact. dirty dirty dirty!

I bypassed the error and my doc appeared on the screen with colors
I changed some text to a color and it works!

I reloaded the file after save, no error, all good still working.

I wanted a clean job, this error could mean it did not do something that would come back and bite my …, so I tried again, zapped the entire user hierarchy this time… and, ouch, my setup gone gone gone…

I redid the setup…(I have list now, so all I have to do is follow that without any hesitation or thinking.
so, it is time to backup the user profile …\Appdata…\user hierarchy.

! Remember the carburetor statement I made earlier !
As I reinstated the setup I had to witness again, the Main Menu in white font… which makes it very painful to read… but at some point I noticed it turned black… I will backtrack and see what gets it to be right as I progress thru the setup. The options on the dropdown menus are in white font, but since the dropdowns background is dark gray… that works!

I would like to know what fried in the config… I will throw a machine file compare on this, and see what it comes up with… and report back.

#20

@ajlittoz – sorry I was not clear… I have backups of my documents. I lost no data
I meant the LO config files… in the Appdata… not knowing which stores what. …while in the process of trying to be more clear about the hierarchy.
Now I know more after reading the User Profile doc pointed in the above post.

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