Edit the Custom Colors for Text Colors in Google Docs

Question

tl;dr the Google Docs color pallete has colors I want and other I do not want. How can I remove some colors?

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In Google Docs, I cannot change a Custom Text Color. If I select Custom Colors for a Text Color, those selected Custom Colors cannot later be edited. Is there any way to unset previously picked Custom Colors in Text Color picker?

For example, given a new Google document,

1. click Text Color

   

2. select Custom...

3. pick some custom color

   

4. click OK

5. again, click Text Color
6. select Custom... . How to edit the previously picked color?

The problem is when I'm trying out different Custom Colors then the custom color palette fills with shades of colors I do not want to use.

For example, after looking for a shade of green I like, the custom color palette looks like:

I'd like to remove the unused shades of green from the custom color palette (and keep the preferred shade of green).

Answer 1

For both Google Apps (Google Docs & Google Sheets) applies the following:

• each custom color is saved in the separate free slot until the last one
• if all slots are full, the last one will act as "editable" slot
• none of custom color slots are editable. every edit is saved separately on next free slot
• used (those which are in usage by some portion of document's text) chosen custom colors can't be removed from color picker (these are saved in a document on Google's side)
• unused chosen custom colors are saved in cookies and can be removed by deleting cookies

Answer 2

To remove the colors that are actually used in the document...

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The color picker will (usually, see the note below) only have colors that currently exist in your document or in your default styles.

Unfortunately, there's no easy way to find where the old colors are, so you need to do a bisect to find them:

1. Copy over some of the content from your original doc to a brand new doc.

2. Look at the color picker in the new doc:

   • If the old color appears, that means some of the content you copied has the color buried in it. Remove it by doing the following:

     1. Find the source of the color. Make sure to look for it in:

        • Color sources: Font, Border, Background
        • Make sure to check: Text, Tables, Images
        • Trickiest place it might be hiding: Newline character at the end of a line (you need to double click at the end of the line to select the newline character).
     2. If you still can't find the culprit, you can use the bisect strategy above to narrow it down to a single paragraph, word, letter, etc.
     3. Once you find the culprit, change its color to one of the approved ones in the original doc.

     4. Refresh the original doc and check if the bad color is still there.

        Important: colors will only disappear after a refresh of the page.

   • If the old color does not appear, this block is safe and you can move on.
3. Repeat the strategy above until you can successfully copy over all the original docs content to a new document and the bad colors don't appear.
4. If you successfully completed the previous step, and after a refresh the old color still appears in the original doc, the last resort is to do the following:
   1. Copy all the content in the doc
   2. Delete all the content
   3. Refresh the page (ensure there are no bad colors)
   4. Paste the content.
   5. The colors should now be fixed.