Colors

Macabacus includes several cycles and other tools for coloring cells and chart elements. Colors used by these tools can be customized in the Excel > Format > Colors section of the Settings dialog. When customizing these colors, you can choose from any color in your Macabacus color palette. If you want to use a color in your cycle that is not available in your palette, you must first modify your palette to include that color.

When cycling through colors in a cycle using a keyboard shortcut, and the last color in the cycle is reached, repeating the keystroke applies the first color in the cycle. While color cycles are intended for use with shortcut keystrokes, you can also access the colors in your color cycles under the Macabacus > Format > Color menu.

Alternate the font color of selected cells between blue and your default font color (typically black) using the Blue-Black Toggle. Blue and black are the font colors used most often in financial modeling, where blue is used to denote inputs and black is used for formulas that reference only cells within the same worksheet.

The Font Color Cycle consists of several customizable font colors that you most frequently use in your modeling. Key the Font Color Cycle shortcut to apply the next font color in the cycle to all selected cells.

The default font color is used for optionally recoloring fonts when exporting cells to PowerPoint/Word and generating PDFs. Black is the default font color, which can be customized.

Recolor colors are font colors that Macabacus will recolor to the default font color when exporting cells to PowerPoint/Word and generating PDFs. Normally, these colors will be similar or identical to your AutoColor colors.

In some cases, you may not want an AutoColor operation (discussed below) to override existing font colors that have special meaning. For example, if you colored a numeric input red as a reminder to update it later, you would not want AutoColor to change the number's font color to blue. To avoid unintended AutoColoring, add red to the list of No AutoColor colors in the Settings dialog. When you later perform an AutoColor operation, cells with red fonts will not be modified. When customizing your No AutoColor colors, note that just one or two colors may be sufficient.

In financial and other types of modeling, font colors are commonly used to visually characterize cell content. For example, numeric inputs are typically colored blue. Macabacus lets you create an AutoColor scheme that defines which font colors to use for cells containing numeric inputs, partial inputs, formulas that reference cells on the same worksheet, formulas that reference cells in other worksheets and workbooks, hyperlinks, and formulas that contain external data functions (e.g., FactSet or CapIQ "pulls").

The default AutoColor scheme that installs with Macabacus reflects the finance industry standard, but you can modify these colors as desired in the Settings dialog. In practice, your AutoColor colors should be the same as or similar to those in your Font Color Cycle.

Apply the AutoColor scheme to all cells in the selected range.

Apply the AutoColor scheme to the active worksheet.

Apply the AutoColor scheme to the entire active workbook.

With this feature enabled, Macabacus will automatically color cell fonts according to your AutoColor scheme as you enter cell values and formulas.

The AutoColor Cycle is comprised of the customizable font colors in your AutoColor scheme. Key the AutoColor Cycle shortcut to apply the next font color in the cycle to all selected cells.

The Fill Color Cycle consists of several customizable cell fill colors that are most frequently used in your modeling. Key the Fill Color Cycle shortcut to apply the next fill color in the cycle to all selected cells.

Shade odd/even rows/columns in the selection the default shading color. Because Macabacus uses conditional formatting to achieve alternate shading, alternate shading will persist as rows/columns are inserted and removed. Alternate shading can be cycled using a keyboard shortcut, or applied using the buttons on the Macabacus > Format > Color > Row/Column Shading menu.

Note that conditional formatting is "volatile," and may slow down Excel when used extensively or applied to very large cell ranges. You can alternatively apply alternating row/column shading using traditional (i.e., non-conditional) formatting with Macabacus' Modify Rows and Modify Columns tools.

The default fill color is used to shade alternate rows/columns. Light gray is the default font color, which can be customized.

The Border Color Cycle consists of several customizable border colors that you most frequently use in your modeling. Key the Border Color Cycle shortcut to apply the next border color in the cycle to all selected cells. Note that Border Color Cycle only changes the color of existing borders and will not add new borders to selected cells.

The default border color is the border color applied when using border style cycles and the Sum Bar tool. Black is the default border color, which can be customized.

The Chart Color Cycle consists of several customizable chart colors that you most frequently use in charting. Key the Chart Color Cycle shortcut to apply the next chart color in the cycle to the selected chart element.

Chart properties that can be colored using this tool include series fill color, series line color, data point fill color, chart area fill color, plot area fill color, gridlines color, and legend fill color. We recommend adding only your most frequently used chart colors (including perhaps a gridline color) to the Chart Color Cycle to limit cycle time.

You can recolor series in selected charts to your customized series colors by clicking the Macabacus > Charts > Recolor Chart > Recolor Series to Defaults button. This is a quick way to apply your preferred color scheme, without having to deal with Office's more cumbersome chart templates. If you specify six chart series colors, and your chart has seven series, for example, the Series 1 color will be applied to Series 7.

_{This documentation refers to the latest Macabacus version. Some features and descriptions of these features may not apply to older versions of Macabacus. Update your Macabacus software to take advantage of the latest features.}