[Solved] Is manually editing standard.soc file a problem?

[PeaceByJesus]

I have often created custom colors (too many!) via Tools?Option>Open Office>Colors, but I find that when updating to a new version then OO loses some and renames others to Chart.... In addition, there is no way to rearrange/organize the order of colors in the chart. So I edited the C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\OpenOffice\4\user\config\standard.soc file, and though it took a while it is now organized, and OO loads and show the color chart fine, but would this create any problem? Why does OO rename custom colors to Chart?

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[Hagar Delest]

See: [Solved] Smooth colors in OpenOffice.
There are some hints about file location for the palette and so on. Just keep a copy of your custom palette somewhere and replace the one installed by default when you upgrade.

Please add [Solved] at the beginning of the title in your first post (top of the topic) with the edit button if your issue has been fixed.

[PeaceByJesus]

Thanks! This one in particular looked better than mine, and I quickly replaced it (OO must be shutdown, including QuickStarter I presume). I forgot the Rule #1 in posting, which is to search (Google site search is best) the forums, and I see that I am not the first one to lose custom colors during an upgrade (likely very few users have such).

However, I have many custom colors in documents (like in font colors) and which OO does not add to the color palette when I load it. I guess I would have to open the file up in a text editor or (better) use Color Detector to use get the code to each one and code that into the standard.soc file. It would be nice if AOO enabled toggling btwn more than one color palette.

In addition, do you know how and why OO adds colors named "Chart," and what the sun-color.soc file is for (I searched).

Edit: I also found that making even the slightest edit via Tools>Option>Open Office>Colors changes the structure of standard.soc file so that the paragraph breaks are all removed, and it becomes one continuous body of text, making organization harder.

[John_Ha]

See Choosing and defining colors - page 178 in the Getting Started Guide (Full Book).

Choosing and defining colors
Color Bar
To display the Color Bar, use View > Toolbars > Color Bar. The toolbar then appears at the bottom of the workspace.
This toolbar lets you rapidly choose the color of the objects in your drawing. The first box in the panel corresponds to transparency (no color).
You can access several specialized color palettes in Draw, as well as change individual colors to your own taste. To do this, choose Format > Area or the pouring can icon on the Line and Filling toolbar. This opens the Area dialog. Choose the Colors tab.

To load another palette, click on the Load Color List button (circled). The file selector dialog asks you to choose one of the standard OOo palettes (files bearing the file extension *.soc). For example, web.soc is a color palette that is particularly adapted to creating drawings that are going to appear in Web pages. The colors will correctly display on workstations with screens displaying at least 256 colors. The color selection box also lets you individually change any color by modifying the numerical values in the fields provided to the right of the color palette. You can use the color schemes known as CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black), and RGB (Red, Green, Blue).

Changing the color palette
Click on the Edit button to open the Color dialog, where you can set individual colors. See “Color options” in Chapter 2 (Setting Up OpenOffice.org) of this book.
Many more input possibilities are available in this dialog. For a more detailed description of color palettes and their options, see Chapter 8 (Tips and Tricks) in the Draw Guide

[PeaceByJesus]

Thanks, but I am dealing with documents, and there is no View > Toolbars > Color Bar. At least not in AOO 4.1.3

[RoryOF]

I think John_Ha was referring to using Draw to define the colours for the palette.

[Denise51]

I cannot find the standard.soc file on that path there are a few standard files but not standard.soc

I would like to back up my format cells colours for when OO updates so which files is it to back up?

[RoryOF]

Try looking again; you possibly have overlooked it. I've just checked on two different computers, one using Windows, one using Xubuntu, and it is in the profile in the config folder.

[Denise51]

Thats a screen shot of my config folder

[RoryOF]

At operating system level turn on viewing of file extensions.

[Denise51]

Thank you got it so that is the one to backup Format Cells on Calc for colors standard.soc brilliant thank you.

[PeaceByJesus]

I cannot find the standard.soc file on that path there are a few standard files but not standard.soc

I would like to back up my format cells colours for when OO updates so which files is it to back up?

My experience with that last upgrade (to 4.1.4) is that the OO updater retained such files as these, but as said, you need to enable viewing of file extensions to see the file extensions. One of the first things I do with a new OS install of Windows is to go Folder Options, or as its called in the Window 10 Control Panel, File explorer options, and uncheck anything marked Hide... but you only need to uncheck Hide extensions.... I also check Show hidden, but for PCs with multiple users that may not be wise.