How to draw a simple table with colored cells in Beamer

Question

I am trying to draw a simple "array" data structure in Beamer using tabular. I would like to color some of the cells blue. Here is my M(N)WE.

\documentclass{beamer}

\usepackage[table]{xcolor}
\begin{document}

\begin{frame}
\frametitle{test}

\begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|}
\hline
\cellcolor{blue!25}A&
\cellcolor{blue!25}B&
\cellcolor{blue!25}C&
B&
A&
B&
C\\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{frame}

\end{document}

This doesn't compile. How should it be done?

The first problem is

! LaTeX Error: Option clash for package xcolor.

Answer 1

Update 2024:

Thanks to changes in recent latex versions, using \usepackage[table]{xcolor} should now work fine and the below answer should no longer be necessary.

Original answer:

The "problem" is, that beamer automatically loads the xcolor-package. But luckily you can simply pass your desired option by using \documentclass[xcolor=table]{beamer}

\documentclass[xcolor=table]{beamer}

\begin{document}

\begin{frame}
\frametitle{test}

\begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|}
\hline
\cellcolor{blue!25}A&
\cellcolor{blue!25}B&
\cellcolor{blue!25}C&
B&
A&
B&
C\\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{frame}

\end{document}

---

Alternatively, you could use the tabularray package:

\documentclass{beamer}

\usepackage{tabularray}

\begin{document}

\begin{frame}
\frametitle{test}

\begin{tblr}{
  colspec={ccccccc},
  hlines,vlines,
  cell{1}{1-3}={bg=blue!25}
}
A & B & C & B & A & B & C\\
\end{tblr}
\end{frame}

\end{document}