Control and persistence of chart colours in Numbers

Anybody else run into this?

Has a practical workaround been found?

In Numbers 14.4 (macOS 15.4), manually assigned chart colours are not preserved consistently when duplicating charts, switching chart types, or applying saved chart styles. This results in significant workflow friction when working with multiple charts that are meant to use consistent colouring (e.g. in dashboards or reports).

Why this matters:

For users working with multiple charts in professional documents — such as educators, analysts, and small business owners — colour consistency is critical. Numbers is otherwise a powerful and clean tool, but this limitation creates unnecessary friction and repetitive manual steps.

Sent this to Apple as feedback today.

Issues encountered:

1. Chart colour overrides are not persistent. 
Manually set colours for data series are lost when:

• Duplicating a chart

• Applying a saved chart style

• Changing the chart type (e.g. from column to line)

2. Inconsistent access to series colours

• Only some chart types (e.g. 2D Column) allow selecting and editing individual series colours via the Format > Style tab.

• In 2D Line Charts, users must manually click on each dataset to access the Style tab and set colours one by one — this is unintuitive and tedious.

• Some chart types (e.g. line) do not expose series colours at all unless precisely selected.

3. Lack of user-defined chart colour sets

• The “Chart Colors” option only allows cycling through Apple’s predefined palettes.

• There is no way to create or apply a custom colour set that persists across charts or documents.

Suggested improvements:

• Allow users to define and save custom colour sets that can be applied to charts.

• Ensure manually assigned colours persist when duplicating or converting charts.

• Make series colours directly accessible from the Format sidebar regardless of chart type or selection context.

• Let saved chart styles include custom colours instead of reassigning them on application.