First, I have to admit that I don't have any experience with PEAR's Excel Writer, but I have quite a bit of Excel experience (including Excel+VBA so I got some experience with the internal workings via code). foreground color should be for the text and/or pattern color. bgcolor should be for the cell color. In the example used in that link, a pattern is set and the foreground color is set to 22. Most likely this 'works' because the pattern is being colored, not the cell background. I'm not sure what color index 22 is or pattern 2, but this seems like a bad solution (or at least not the 'right' solution) to what's being asked. The quest was if you have pattern set to 0 (no pattern I would think), why a background color doesn't work properly. Right now I don't have a good answer for anyone, but wanted to break down what was already mentioned and say that you might want to keep looking for a better solution. No offense Torsten. But I'm thinking that if Louis puts any data into that cell, it's going to show up in the 'fgcolor' color which may not be acceptable to what he's trying to do. But hey... I could be wrong too. It's happened before. hah. Louis! You might check on the PEAR mailing list as well.. check their archives and such. Someone may have had a similar problem and they most likely discussed it there before they did here. http://pear.php.net Good luck! Let us know if you find a solution. I have an interest in PHP<->Excel stuff, but havn't had any need for it recently. So I'm eager to learn of any issues with PEAR's Excel Writer or other PHP/Excel solutions. Thanks! -TG = = = Original message = = = "Louis Young" <louis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:41EE6AB7.6080101@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > Hi there > > Why does my background color not show if I set a cells pattern to 0? > > Cheers > Louis Hi Louis, take a look here: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=pear-general&m=108127548918900&w=2 Have you tried setFgColor()? Regards, Torsten ___________________________________________________________ Sent by ePrompter, the premier email notification software. Free download at http://www.ePrompter.com. -- PHP Windows Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php