Do as I say, not do as I do comes to mind :p

I used to always use Standard Colors until Microsoft got rid of the full palette. Really wish they would bring it back.

Alex LOL! Hi Alex, that made me laugh out loud.

Kevin Really? I have Access 365, I'm watching these and typing on my Mac so I'll have to turn on the PC and check that, appreciate the heads up.

I was waiting for someone to point that out. I didn't want to be the one....LOL

LOL. Alex pretty much nailed it: "Do as I say, not as I do." :)

There actually is a reason for it, though. When I'm developing something for myself or building something for production, I generally prefer to use specific colors, and when I'm coding them I almost always use hex colors converted to RGB. The same goes for fonts, sizes, and other formatting. If I designed it to look a certain way, I want it to stay that way. HexToRGB

That's always been my biggest issue with theme colors and fonts. Themes can change, and Microsoft has certainly changed defaults over the years. We've gone through things like Tahoma, Calibri, Aptos, etc. I don't want something I built years ago suddenly looking different because Microsoft decided the new default should be something else.

But Microsoft also changed the color palette, and getting to the exact colors I want now takes more clicking than it used to. When I'm recording a training video, I'm usually trying to keep things moving. I'm not going to stop the lesson and click three levels deep just to select an exact color when the particular shade isn't important to what I'm teaching. So I'll grab a convenient theme color and move on.

So yes, you caught me. :) For training videos, it's mostly for brevity. For my own production databases, I'm much more particular about specifying the actual colors and formatting I want.

And I'm glad to hear you're going through the courses a second time, Paul. It's amazing how much more you pick up on another pass once you've already got the foundation. Thanks for the kind words!

I know when it comes to themes, I tend to fall in as the black sheep of the ALZ student body. I have gotten comfortable working with them. For example, the specific situation of Microsoft changing the color or fonts of the default theme is easily mitigated by following a best practice Richard discusses in most of his videos: Back up your d---, err, theme, color set, or font.

For example, if you like the current default theme, just go into the theme section, go to the color set and edit and then save a copy of the default theme colors as whatever (i.e. ALZ Colors), do the same for fonts (ALZ fonts) and then save as a new theme. If Microsoft modifies the default, it won't effect your database at all because you're using your own custom theme. And that way, you get a full expanded palette to work with.

And you can set up to 3 default themes per Access application: 1 Overall, 1 for Forms, and 1 for Reports. On top of that, you can set a separate custom theme for each individual form or report.

Anyway, I'm not trying to beat a dead horse, just saying that as with anything in developing, proper planning and backups can reduce or even eliminate many of the issues.

Kevin You're right! I just checked, there's a ton of Theme colors but a very limited amount of Standard colors. But a couple more clicks will bring up a different palette, however, I did like the old interface better.