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• Overview of Office themes

• Theme colors

• Theme fonts

• Theme effects

• Quick Styles

• PowerPoint background styles

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Overview of Office themes

  Notes  

• PowerPoint 2007 themes replace design templates (design template: A file that contains the styles in a presentation, including the type and size of bullets and fonts; placeholder sizes and positions; background design and fill color schemes; and a slide master and optional title master.) used in earlier versions of PowerPoint.
• To add, customize, and format a background style and to use a picture or texture as a slide background, see the article Add a background to your presentation.
• To customize a theme, see the article Customize and save a theme in PowerPoint 2007.

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.

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

 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 in Office PowerPoint 2007. 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. Also, in Office PowerPoint 2007, even the layouts and backgrounds of your slides can be changed dramatically from theme to theme. If you like the way that a theme looks when you apply it to your presentation, you are finished reformatting with just that one click. If you want to customize your presentation further, you can change the theme colors, theme fonts, or theme effects.

You can use built-in themes or customize your own themes in PowerPoint 2007.

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The difference between themes and templates

Themes are what you see in the Themes gallery. Although a theme can be a stand-alone file type (.thmx), every presentation that you create has a theme inside it — even blank, new presentations 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 PowerPoint template is a special "starter" file type (.potx). When you open a template, a new presentation opens with content, layout, formatting, styles, and the theme applied to that template.

When you create and save a template, you can access it later in the New Presentation dialog box. When you create and save a theme, it appears in the Themes gallery.

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Customizing themes

You can create many different custom themes by starting with 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:

• On the Design tab, in the Themes group, click the More button , 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 Customize a theme in PowerPoint 2007.

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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 presentation, with the exception of changing the theme. With one click, you can change the tone of a presentation 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 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 very well. 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. PowerPoint 2007 uses large text, sometimes lightly colored on a dark background.

When you click Colors 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 button and next to the Theme name will be updated accordingly.

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 custom theme colors, in the Themes group, click Colors, and then click Create New Theme Colors.

For step-by-step information about customizing theme colors, see the article Customize a theme in PowerPoint 2007.

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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. Office PowerPoint 2007 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 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.

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 Customize a theme in PowerPoint 2007.

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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, pictures, tables, WordArt (WordArt: Text objects you create with ready-made effects to which you can apply additional formatting options.), and text. 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.

For step-by-step information about customizing theme effects, see the article Customize a theme in PowerPoint 2007.

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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.

In Office PowerPoint 2007, 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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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.

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.

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.

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.

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