Remove Color Formatting

The OAK4 | Workbook or Worksheet | Remove Color Formatting command removes all non-conditional color formatting from either entire workbooks or a selection of worksheets within a workbook.

Why would you want to use it?

Polite version: Sometimes when you first receive a new model that has been built by someone else you will find that many colors are used.  These colors may have been helpful to the original modeller in reminding them of what each part of the model does, but can be confusing when you try and read the model.  The Remove Color Formatting tool allows you to remove these confusing colors.

Impolite version: In Operis's experience, the quality of a financial model is inversely related to its use of color.  When Operis receives a model for review, and opens it for the first time, an initial verdict of "Very colorful" would not be a flattering one.

Paranoid version: Some models seek to hide calculations that don't bear close scrutiny by formatting them as white text on a white background, so that they aren't obvious to casual readers.

OAK's Remove Color Formatting command removes color formatting from the text in the cell as well as the cell background.  This allows you to spot when things have been hidden by making the text the same color as the cell background.

How to use it

To remove colors from a selection of sheets within a workbook, choose the Selected Worksheets option.  Then choose the workbook that contains the required worksheets from the list on the left and choose the required worksheets from the list on the right.

Wrinkles

This tool does not remove any conditional color formatting.  To remove conditional formatting from a cell or selection of cells go to Format | Conditional Formatting.  Then click Delete and select all of the conditions in the dialog box that appears. Click OK and the conditional formats will be removed.

Excel allows a limited number of cell formats, and in versions of Excel prior to Excel 2007 this limit is sufficiently low for some developers of very colorful workbooks to encounter it. Remove Color Formatting uses a simple method of removing the formatting, but in doing so briefly increases the cell format count, so it is possible that Remove Color Formatting will not work on workbooks that have already approached the limit.

What you could do if you didn't have OAK

The colors can be removed from a single sheet by pressing Ctrl+A to select the whole sheet, selecting No Fill from the Fill Color tool and then selecting Automatic from the Font Color tool.  This method means that colors must be removed from worksheets one sheet at a time.  With OAK’s Remove Color Formatting tool the colors can be removed from many worksheets at once.