When you are building a professional Microsoft PowerPoint presentation, maintaining a strict, cohesive color palette is crucial for visual appeal. If you insert your company’s logo onto a slide and you want to color your text headers or shapes to perfectly match the exact shade of blue used in that logo, guessing the color from a standard palette almost always looks sloppy and unprofessional. To guarantee an absolutely perfect match, you must use PowerPoint’s built-in Eyedropper tool.
How the Eyedropper Works
The Eyedropper is a color-sampling utility. Instead of typing in complex HEX codes or RGB values, the tool allows you to physically point at a pixel on your screen and instruct PowerPoint to instantly clone that exact color.
You can use the Eyedropper to sample colors from photographs, corporate logos, vector icons, or even other shapes that are currently present on your slide.
How to Use the Eyedropper to Color Text
Imagine you have a photograph of a sunset on your slide, and you want your title text to perfectly match the vibrant orange of the sun.
- Highlight the text you want to change (e.g., the title of your slide).
- Navigate to the Home tab on the ribbon menu.
- In the “Font” group, click the small downward-pointing arrow next to the Font Color button (the button with a capital ‘A’ and a colored bar underneath it).
- At the very bottom of the drop-down menu, click on Eyedropper.
- Your mouse cursor will immediately change into an eyedropper icon accompanied by a small square preview box.
- Move your mouse over the sunset photograph. As you move, the preview box will update in real-time, showing you the exact color of the pixel directly underneath the tip of the eyedropper.
- When you find the perfect shade of orange, simply click your mouse once.
Your highlighted text will instantly change to that exact color.
Sampling Colors Outside of PowerPoint
By default, the Eyedropper tool only allows you to sample colors that are physically located inside the PowerPoint slide canvas. If you try to drag the eyedropper onto your computer’s desktop or over to a web browser, the tool will turn off.
However, there is a hidden trick to sample colors from anywhere on your monitor.
- Activate the Eyedropper tool as normal.
- Click inside the PowerPoint slide, but do not release the mouse button.
- While holding the mouse button down, drag the eyedropper completely outside of the PowerPoint application window.
You can now drag the tool over a website you have open in Chrome, or a PDF you have open on your other monitor. Release the mouse button when hovering over the color you want, and PowerPoint will instantly capture and apply that color from the external application.