Change default bright red color of the note indicator in Microsoft Excel

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Change default bright red color of the note indicator in Microsoft Excel

Vaibhav Mittal 25

Is there a way to change the note indicator color which is defaulted to bright red color in Microsoft Excel? I want to change the color to green. Please guide on the steps to change it.

If the above is possible, is it possible to do this through POI API that I am using to generate the Excel?

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Answer 1

Rin-L 15,665 Microsoft External Staff Moderator

Hi @Vaibhav Mittal,

Unfortunately, Excel does not provide any built-in option to change the default bright red color of the note indicator. The small red triangle shown in the corner of a cell is a hardcoded UI element controlled entirely by Excel’s internal rendering engine. Because of this, its color isn’t stored as part of the workbook’s file structure.

Since the indicator color is managed at the Excel application level (not the file format level), there’s no property exposed that libraries like Apache POI can read or modify. The same limitation applies across all Excel manipulation libraries, including POI, NPOI, EPPlus, and the OpenXML SDK. As a result, it isn’t possible to programmatically change the note indicator triangle color through POI either.

I understand this may not be the answer you were hoping for. As a forum moderator, I don’t have the ability to modify built‑in Excel behaviors, I can only help confirm how the product currently works and make sure you have clear information.

If you would like Excel to support customizing the note indicator color in the future, you’re very welcome to submit this as a feature request to the Excel · Community. If you share the link here afterward, I and others who agree with your idea can help vote for it.

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Vaibhav Mittal 25 Reputation points

2026-03-11T11:55:36.84+00:00

Hi @Rin-L ,

Thanks for the prompt response and the confirmation on the existing behavior. I have gone ahead and posted the feature request as suggested by you. Please let me know if this is something that can be worked on soon. Here is the link to my post:

https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/dbef47d5-401d-f111-9730-0022485314bc
Rin-L 15,665 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-03-11T12:01:44.17+00:00

Hi @Vaibhav Mittal,

Thank you so much for sharing the update and for taking the time to submit the feature request. I really appreciate it.

I’ve gone ahead and added my vote to your post to show support, and I’m also hoping it gets reviewed and considered for development soon.

There’s also a good chance that other customers feel the same way but simply haven’t known where to leave feedback. Because of that, it would mean a lot if you could also click “Accept answer” on this thread. When an answer is accepted, the post automatically gets pinned to top and becomes much easier for others in the community who might be facing the same issue to discover, and to add their own support to your feedback.

Your voice genuinely matters here, and collective feedback is one of the most effective ways to drive improvements in the product. Thanks again for your effort and collaboration.

Answer 2

Excel does not provide any built‑in option in the user interface to change the default bright red color of the note/comment indicator triangle. The indicator color is controlled internally and cannot be customized to green (or any other color) via standard Excel settings.

The closest related, configurable color in the object model is the error‑checking indicator color, exposed via the ErrorCheckingOptions.IndicatorColorIndex property. This allows changing the color of the green error‑checking triangle, not the note/comment indicator. For example, in VBA:

Application.ErrorCheckingOptions.IndicatorColorIndex = xlColorIndexAutomatic

or via the .NET interop API using the IndicatorColorIndex property. However, this does not affect note/comment indicators.

Because the note indicator color is not exposed as a configurable property in Excel, it also cannot be changed through external libraries such as Apache POI. POI can control cell formatting (font color, fill color, etc.), but not the built‑in note indicator triangle color.

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Change default bright red color of the note indicator in Microsoft Excel

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