Themes in Microsoft Office 2007
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Themes consist of color, font and effect selections. Office 2007 comes with a
large collection of pre-built themes that can be applied in an instant.
Themes provide a cohesive look amongst all the named styles,
graphical effects and other components used in a workbook. The Accent1 style,
for example, looks entirely different in the Apex theme than it did in the
Office theme.
To apply a theme in Word or Excel, on the Ribbon, go to the 'Page Layout' tab of
the Ribbon and click Themes to view the Themes gallery. Live Preview helps you
decide which theme to use before you actually click to apply it.
In PowerPoint, find the Themes gallery on the Design tab. In a new mail message,
it's on the Options tab.
The Themes gallery also provides shortcuts for cruising to Microsoft or to your
own hard drive to look for themes and to save the current selection of theme
fonts, theme colors, and effects as a new theme.
Because themes are shared by Excel, Word, Outlook and PowerPoint, they help you
achieve a consistent look to your work and help you adhere to your
organization's design standards.
By default, the Office theme is applied to new workbooks, documents, messages and
presentations. |
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Custom Themes
You can also save the current theme so that you can save your own combination of
colors, fonts and effects as a theme to use with other files. Themes have a
.thmx extension. Themes you create and save will be displayed in the gallery in
the Custom category at the top. If you create a theme in one Office product,
Excel for example, it will be available in other Office products, Word for
example.
To create a theme, you can use the color sets (theme colors) and font sets (theme
fonts) that are built-in or you can create your own theme colors and theme
fonts. (You are limited to the built-in theme effects.) Once you have your three
settings (colors, fonts and effects) the way you want, apply them to your
existing document and then use the Themes gallery and choose 'Save Current
Theme'.
Creating New Theme Fonts
It isn't necessary to create new theme fonts or colors in order to create a new
theme; you can just swap around existing theme colors and theme fonts and theme
effects to get a new combination which can be saved as a new theme, but you can
create your own set of theme fonts if the built-in ones don't suit.
| Each theme uses two fonts; one for the headers and one for the body.
The option to create new theme fonts is at the bottom of the Fonts gallery in
the Themes group. This will launch the 'Create New Theme Fonts' dialog box. Just
choose a Heading font and a Body font and give your theme fonts a name and click
Save. The new theme font will appear above the built-in font themes, in the
Custom category in the gallery. |
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Creating New Theme Colors
| The technique for creating theme colors is quite
similar to creating theme fonts. At the bottom of the Colors gallery in the Themes
group is the option to launch the 'Create New Theme Colors' dialog box where you
can name the theme color scheme and assign the colors using the drop-downs
provided.
Like custom theme fonts, custom theme colors will appear at the top in the custom
category in their respective galleries. |
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Once you have your three settings (colors, fonts and effects) the way you want,
apply them to your existing document and then use the Themes command to choose
'Save Current Theme'. Give your theme a catchy name. Now open a different Office
product and notice your theme is available there also.
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