Documentation/Calc Functions/COLOR

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Calc Functions Home | List of functions | Abbreviations

Function name:

COLOR

Category:

Mathematical

Summary:

Combines specified values of the red, green, blue, and alpha channels of an RGBA color representation to produce a single encoded value.

Syntax:

COLOR(Red; Green; Blue[; Alpha])

Returns:

Returns an integer in the range [0, 2³²-1] that is the color value constructed from the specified components.

Arguments:

Red is an integer in the range [0, 255], or a reference to a cell containing that number, that is the intensity of the red color.

Green is an integer in the range [0, 255], or a reference to a cell containing that number, that is the intensity of the green color.

Blue is an integer in the range [0, 255], or a reference to a cell containing that number, that is the intensity of the blue color.

Alpha is an integer in the range [0, 255], or a reference to a cell containing that number, that is the value for the alpha channel. If omitted, a default value of 0 is applied. A value of 0 means that the color is fully transparent, whereas a value of 255 gives a fully opaque color.

• If any argument is non-numeric, then COLOR reports a #VALUE! error.
• If any argument is a non-integer value, then COLOR converts it to an integer by taking its floor value.
• If any argument is less than 0 or greater than 255, then COLOR reports an invalid argument error (Err:502).

Additional details:

• The value returned by COLOR has the alpha sample in its most significant 8 bits, followed by the red sample, green sample and finally the blue sample in the least significant 8 bits.
• COLOR combines the samples using the following formula:
  [math]\displaystyle{ \text{COLOR}(red, green, blue, alpha)~=~256*256*256*alpha~+~ 256*256*red~+~256*green~+~blue }[/math]
• 2³² is equal to 4294967296.

Examples:

Formula	Description	Returns
=COLOR(255; 255; 255; 255)	All components take their maximum values and COLOR returns the value 4294967295 (hex 0xFFFFFFFF).	4294967295
=COLOR(D1; D2; D3; D4) where cells D1, D2, D3, and D4 all contain the number 119.	All components take the value 119 and COLOR returns the value 2004318071 (hex 0x77777777).	2004318071
=COLOR(119.2; 119.7; 119.5; 119.9)	COLOR takes the floor value of each argument. After truncation, all components take the value 119 and COLOR returns the value 2004318071 (hex 0x77777777).	2004318071
=COLOR(255; 255; 255)	Here no value for the alpha channel is specified and the default value of 0 is assumed. COLOR returns the value 16777215 (hex 0x00FFFFFF).	16777215
=COLOR(11; 12; 13; 10)	This example is useful to confirm how the function constructs the coded value by viewing its structure in hexadecimal format. COLOR returns the value 168496141 (hex 0x0A0B0C0D).	168496141

Related LibreOffice functions:

None.

ODF standard:

None.

Related (or similar) Excel functions:

None.