MSOCOLOR: Microsoft Office Theme Colors

MSOCOLOR is intended simplify the creation of MATLAB figures that are color-matched to MS Office documents.

MSOCOLOR is only compatible with MS Office 2007 or later (to the authors knowledge) and uses MATLAB's .NET interface and DOM XML reader.

MSOCOLOR('theme') reads color data from 'theme.xml' file in "Theme Colors" folders within (both global and user) Office Templates folders. The default theme (which is not given as a file) can be retrieved by specifying 'Office'. There are 40 additional built-in themes in MS Office 2010: Adjacency, Angles, Apex, Apothecary, Aspect, Austin, Black Tie, Civic, Clarity, Composite, Concourse, Couture, Elemental, Equity, Essential, Executive, Flow, Foundry, Grayscale, Grid, Hardcover, Horizon, Median, Metro, Module, Newsprint, Opulent, Oriel, Origin, Paper, Perspective, Pushpin, Slipstream, Solstice, Technic, Thatch, Trek, Urban, Verve, and Waveform.

MSOCOLOR(APPNAME) can retrieve the color scheme of currently active file in the Office application specified by APPNAME. APPNAME can be one of 'word', 'excel', or 'powerpoint'.

MSOCOLOR(APPNAME,FILENAME) may be used to retrieve the color scheme of an existing Office data file specified by FILENAME. The file must be a valid format for the specified application.

In addition to retrieving the colors as is, MSOCOLOR has the built-in capability to darken or lighten the color palette in the same way MS Office handles it.

Example: To use the default MS OFfice Accent colors as the plot line colors:

C = msocolor('Office');
axes('NextPlot','replacechildren','ColorOrder',C.AccentColors);
plot(rand(20,6));
legend show

Note that NextPlot property of the axes must be set to 'replacechildren' to change ColorOrder for subsequent plot command to keep the ColorOrder.

Please consult the command-window help text of MSOCOLOR ('help msocolor') for the detailed description of the function and its input argument options.