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Office document themes

In the past, it took time to format Microsoft Office documents to match because you had to choose color or style

options for your tables, charts, shapes, and diagrams separately. In the 2007 Microsoft Office system,

themes (theme: A combination of theme colors, theme fonts, and theme effects. A theme may be applied to a file as a

single selection.) simplify the process of creating matching, professional-looking documents not only within one

program but across multiple programs. The same themes are now available in Microsoft Office Excel 2007, Microsoft

Office PowerPoint 2007, Microsoft Office Word 2007, and Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, and you can easily apply a

theme with one click. Use themes to give all of your organization's communications a branded look.

The same theme used in Office PowerPoint 2007, Office Excel 2007, and Office Word 2007

All of your content links to the theme. If you change the theme, a complete set of new colors, fonts, and effects is

applied to your entire 2007 Office release document. Although themes are similar in name to a previous feature in

Word, themes are an entirely new way to give all of your 2007 Office release documents a modern and professional

look.

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To try different themes, rest your pointer over a thumbnail in the Themes gallery and notice how your document

changes.

Four themes that are applied to the same SmartArt graphic. Clockwise from the upper left: Metro, the default Office theme,

Apex, and Trek.

TIP You can download additional themes from Microsoft Office Online. In the Themes gallery, click the More

Themes on Microsoft Office Online link.

Applying a new theme changes the major details of your document. WordArt (WordArt: Text objects you create with

ready-made effects to which you can apply additional formatting options.) effects are applied to titles, except in Office

Word 2007 documents. Tables, charts, SmartArt graphics, shapes, and other objects (object: A table, chart, graphic,

equation, or other form of information. Objects created in one application, for example spreadsheets, and linked or

embedded in another application are OLE objects.) are updated to complement one another. In Office PowerPoint

2007, even the layouts and backgrounds of your slides can be changed dramatically from theme to theme. If you like

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the way that a theme looks when you apply it to your document, you are finished reformatting your document with

that one click. If you want to transform your document further, you can change the theme colors, theme fonts, or

theme effects.

You can use predefined document themes or create your own themes by customizing an existing document theme

and then saving it as a custom document theme.

NOTE If you use Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 without having Microsoft Office Word 2007 installed on your

computer, themes are not available.

Themes and templates

Themes are what you see in the Themes gallery. Although a theme can be a stand-alone file type, every document

that you create by using the 2007 Office release has a theme inside it — even blank, new documents have a theme

applied to them. The built-in themes do not contain text or data, but theme colors, theme fonts, or theme effects apply

to all parts of your document, including text and data.

A template is a special "starter" document type. When you open a template, a new document opens with the content,

layout, formatting, styles (in Office Word 2007 documents), and the theme from that template.

When you create and save a template, you access it later in the Program Name New dialog box of the program that

you created it in. When you create and save a theme, it appears in the Themes gallery.

The difference between themes and PowerPoint design templates

Beginning with Office PowerPoint 2007, templates are "starter" documents, just like those in Office Word 2007 and

Office Excel 2007, and can contain starting content or boilerplate text. Themes replace the PowerPoint slide designs

and can contain one or more slide masters (slide master: The main slide that stores information about the theme and

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layouts of a presentation, including the background, color, fonts, effects, placeholder sizes, and positions.). Each

presentation has a master for each key component: slides, title slides, speaker's notes, and audience handouts.

Also, in previous releases of PowerPoint, design templates came with their own sets of color schemes and font

schemes that worked for that design template only. In Office PowerPoint 2007, theme colors and theme fonts work

with all of your 2007 Office release documents. Design templates were meant to provide you with one quick and

attractive solution, and themes provide you with multiple options.

The interaction between themes and templates in Office Word 2007

Templates contain formatting that is based upon the theme. Often, the formatting in a template is done with styles,

which define the paragraph formatting and aspects of the text formatting, such as size. Styles may also include table

styles. In Office Word 2007, the themes determine which colors and fonts are used by those styles. The definitions of

the styles that are used for text can be changed independently of the theme. For more information, see the article

Change a style or Create a new Quick Style.

If you use a resume or cover letter template that has one theme applied to it, you can change the theme to make your

resume or cover letter more distinctive. For example, if your resume template has the Urban theme, you can apply

the Solstice theme to make it more unique.

Customizing themes

You can create many different custom themes from the core built-in themes. The customization for theme colors,

theme fonts, and theme effects is next to the Themes gallery. Choose a theme, change its settings or define your

own, and then save the settings as a new theme in your gallery. You can also delete a custom theme that you no

longer need.

For even more new colors, fonts, and effects, do one of the following to download new themes from Microsoft Office

Online:

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Which 2007 Microsoft Office system program are you using?

Excel

In Excel 2007, on the Page Layout tab, in the Themes group, click Themes, and then click More Themes

on Microsoft Office Online.

Outlook

In Outlook 2007, on the Page Layout tab, in the Themes group, click Themes, and then click More

Themes on Microsoft Office Online.

PowerPoint

In PowerPoint 2007, on the Design tab, in the Themes group, click the More button , and then click

More Themes on Microsoft Office Online.

Word

In Word 2007, on the Page Layout tab, in the Themes group, click Themes, and then click More Themes

on Microsoft Office Online.

For step-by-step information about changing or customizing theme colors or fonts, see the article Apply or customize

a document theme.

Theme colors

Changing theme colors (theme colors: A set of colors that is used in a file. Theme colors, theme fonts, and theme

effects compose a theme.) is the most dramatic change you can make to your Office document, with the exception of

changing the theme. With one click, you can change the tone of a document from casual to formal, or vice versa, by

changing the theme colors.

Theme colors have 12 color slots. The first four horizontal colors are for text and backgrounds. Text that is created

with the light colors will always be legible over the dark colors, and text that is created with dark colors will always be

legible over the light colors. The next six are accent colors that are always visible over the four potential background

colors. The last two colors, not shown in the picture below, are reserved for hyperlinks (hyperlink: Colored and

underlined text or a graphic that you click to go to a file, a location in a file, a Web page on the World Wide Web, or a

Web page on an intranet. Hyperlinks can also go to newsgroups and to Gopher, Telnet, and FTP sites.) and followed

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hyperlinks (followed hyperlink: A hyperlink to a destination you have visited. Once you follow a hyperlink to its

destination, the hyperlink changes color.).

Theme colors handle both light and dark backgrounds, because the page backgrounds of Word 2007 documents and

Excel 2007 workbooks are often white. PowerPoint 2007 uses large text, sometimes lightly colored on a dark

background. Word 2007 uses smaller, dark text almost always on a white background. In general, Word 2007 does

not use the theme colors for text —instead, text in Word 2007 is formatted to use the Automatic color because most

Word 2007 documents are read against a white background. There are visibility rules built into the theme so that you

can switch colors at any time and all your content will remain legible and still look good.

When you click Colors (or Theme Colors in Word 2007) in the Themes group, the colors that you see next to the

theme name represent the accent and hyperlink colors for that theme. If you change any of these colors to create

your own set of theme colors, the colors that are shown on the Colors (or Theme Colors in Word 2007) button and

next to the Theme name will be updated accordingly.

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The theme colors are shown in every color gallery along with a set of tints and shades that are based on the theme

colors. By selecting colors from this expanded, matched set, you can make formatting choices for individual pieces of

content that follow the theme. When the theme colors change, the gallery of colors changes, and so does all

document content that uses the theme colors.

The Theme Colors gallery displays all the color sets from the built-in themes. To create your own theme colors, in the

Themes group, click Colors (or Theme Colors in Word 2007), and then click Create New Theme Colors.

For step-by-step information about customizing theme colors, see the article Apply or customize a document theme.

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Theme fonts

Professional document designers know that using a single font face for an entire document is always a tasteful and

safe design choice. Two fonts are a better choice, when used carefully for contrast. Every Office theme defines two

fonts — one for headings and one for body text. They can be the same font (used everywhere) or two different fonts.

Each 2007 Office release program uses these fonts to construct automatic text styles. In addition, Quick

Styles (Quick Styles: Collections of formatting options that make formatting your documents and objects easier.)

galleries for text and WordArt (WordArt: Text objects you create with ready-made effects to which you can apply

additional formatting options.) use these same theme fonts (theme fonts: A set of major and minor fonts that is

applied to a file. Theme fonts, theme colors, and theme effects compose a theme.).

Changing the theme fonts in Office PowerPoint 2007 updates all of the title and bullet text in your presentation. In

previous releases of PowerPoint, you had to make this kind of global change on a slide master (slide master: The

main slide that stores information about the theme and layouts of a presentation, including the background, color,

fonts, effects, placeholder sizes, and positions.).

When you click Fonts in the Themes group, the names of the heading font and body text font that are used for each

theme font appear below the theme name. You can change both of these fonts to create your own set of theme fonts.

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In addition, the Create New Theme Fonts dialog box has been updated to show the current theme fonts in use.

For step-by-step information about customizing theme fonts, see the article Apply or customize a document theme.

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Theme effects

Theme effects (theme effects: A set of visual attributes that is applied to elements in a file. Theme effects, theme

colors, and theme fonts compose a theme.) specify how effects are applied to your charts, SmartArt graphics,

shapes, and pictures (and also tables, WordArt (WordArt: Text objects you create with ready-made effects to which

you can apply additional formatting options.), and text in Office PowerPoint 2007). By using the Theme Effects

gallery, you can replace different sets of effects to quickly change the look of these objects (object: A table, chart,

graphic, equation, or other form of information. Objects created in one application, for example spreadsheets, and

linked or embedded in another application are OLE objects.). Although you cannot create your own set of theme

effects, you can choose the effect that you want to use in your own theme.

In every theme, there is an effect matrix that is used to generate the theme effect. The effect matrix has three style

levels of line, fill, and special effects, such as shadow and three-dimensional (3-D) effects. Professional designers

often refer to these style levels as "stroke," "tone," and "depth." By combining three formatting dimensions — lines,

fills, and effects — you can generate visuals that all match the same theme effects.

Here is the effect matrix for the Office theme (the default theme).

Each theme has a different effect matrix for a different look. For example, one theme may have a metallic look, and

another may look like frosted glass.

When you click Effects (or Theme Effects in Word 2007) in the Themes group, you can see the line and fill effects

that are used for each set of theme effects in the gallery that is displayed with the specific theme.

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Quick Styles

Although themes change the overall colors, fonts, and effects that are used, Quick Styles (Quick Styles: Collections

of formatting options that make formatting your documents and objects easier.), (or Styles), change how the different

colors, fonts, and effects are combined and which color, font, and effect is dominant. When you rest the pointer on a

Quick Style thumbnail, you can see how the Quick Style affects your table, SmartArt graphic, chart, or shape.

The design description (theme colors (theme colors: A set of colors that is used in a file. Theme colors, theme fonts,

and theme effects compose a theme.), theme fonts (theme fonts: A set of major and minor fonts that is applied to a

file. Theme fonts, theme colors, and theme effects compose a theme.), and theme effects (theme effects: A set of

visual attributes that is applied to elements in a file. Theme effects, theme colors, and theme fonts compose a

theme.)) of themes provides galleries of Quick Styles that always match the theme of your document. Themes and

Quick Styles are both created by visual designers so that all of your documents look professionally created. When

you choose from the various Quick Style galleries, your content will be well-matched to your overall document theme.

The Shape Quick Style gallery

Each 2007 Office release program has unique formatting capabilities that are tailored to the document type that it

creates. Office Word 2007 Quick Styles, Office Excel 2007 cell styles, and Office PowerPoint 2007 background styles

do similar things in very different ways. The theme colors, theme fonts, and theme effects are like a list of formatting

ingredients, and each Quick Style is like a recipe.

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Word Quick Styles

In Office Word 2007, you can choose a set of document text styles, or pre-designed Quick Style sets (such as

Distinctive) that are designed to work together to create an attractive and professional-looking document. For

example, one set of Office Word 2007 Quick Styles may include styles for several heading levels, body text, a

quotation, and a title. All of the style colors and formats in a single style set are designed to be used together to

create an attractive and compelling document.

All that you must do is choose the Quick Style set that is appropriate for the document that you are creating and then

apply the styles from the convenient Quick Styles gallery when you create your document.

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Quick Styles gallery opened by using the Mini toolbar

In most cases, you will not change styles in a Quick Style set because the styles are designed to complement one

another, and it is easier to use a different Quick Style set. Under certain circumstances, however, you might want to

change the attributes of a style in a Quick Style set or add a brand new style, such as a new table or list style. When

you save a Quick Style set as your default for new documents, the theme that is currently applied to the document is

also made the default theme.

Applying a different theme to a document that was created with a Quick Style set makes it easy to create a

professional and unique-looking document.

Excel cell styles

A cell style is a defined set of formatting characteristics, such as fonts (font: A graphic design applied to all numerals,

symbols, and alphabetic characters. Also called type or typeface. Arial and Courier New are examples of fonts. Fonts

usually come in different sizes, such as 10 point, and various styles, such as bold.) and font sizes, number formats,

cell borders, and cell shading. To prevent others from changing specific cells, you can also use a cell style that locks

cells. Office Excel 2007 has several built-in cell styles that you can apply or modify. You can also modify or duplicate

a cell style to create your own custom cell style.

Cell styles are based on the document theme (theme: A combination of theme colors, theme fonts, and theme

effects. A theme may be applied to a file as a single selection.) that is applied to an entire workbook. When you

switch to another theme, the cell styles are updated to match the new theme.

For more information about cell styles, see the article Apply, create, or remove a cell style.

PowerPoint background styles

Background styles are unique to Office PowerPoint 2007 and use the new theme color (theme colors: A set of colors

that is used in a file. Theme colors, theme fonts, and theme effects compose a theme.) model that defines two dark

colors and two light colors to be used for text and backgrounds. The light colors are always visible over the dark

colors and vice versa, such as when dark color text is used over a light background. There are six accent colors that

look good over any of the four possible background colors.

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Example of colors in background styles

Also, inside each theme (theme: A combination of theme colors, theme fonts, and theme effects. A theme may be

applied to a file as a single selection.) are three background-fill definitions: subtle, moderate, and intense. By

combining the 4 background colors with the 3 theme backgrounds, you get 12 possible background styles.

In the built-in themes, the top row of the Background Styles gallery is always solid fill. To access the Background

Styles gallery, on the Design tab, in the Background group, click Background Styles.

Example of a Background styles gallery

If you apply the background styles from the second row of the gallery shown in the illustration above, you get the four

variations shown in the following illustration.

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Four variations of background styles

Notice how the dark and light text and the background colors are automatically switched based on the background

that you choose. Many slide show projectors show dark backgrounds and light text better than they show light

backgrounds and dark text. You can use the background styles as a quick way to transform your presentation for

better projection.

For step-by-step information about adding a background to your slide, see the article Add a background to your

presentation.

TIP To apply a background style or theme to only some slides in your presentation, right-click the background style

or theme, and then click Apply to Selected Slides on the shortcut menu.