Custom Office Theme sharing

Question

I made a custom office theme saved as a .thmx file in PowerPoint 2016 for Mac. The theme consists of Arial font family and a color. Click this link to download Test Theme 2016.thmx from OneDrive. On the Mac, it works as expected. When this file is in the Themes folder on a Mac the custom theme behaves as expected. It shows in the PowerPoint Themes gallery like this:

In Excel 2016 for, it shows in the Page Layout tab of the Ribbon like this:

In Word 2016 it appears in the Design tab of the Ribbon like this:

When I apply the theme in Word. Excel and PowerPoint, the current document takes on Arial font as expected and the active color palette displays the colors I chose along with their variants, like this:

This is the behavior I expect for an Office Theme.

I've put this theme in several different locations in Office 2016 for Windows, but I have yet to find the right location to get the expected behavior. I can browse to the saved file and apply it, but in Word and Excel 2016 for Windows the font does change to Arial as Expected but it does in PowerPoint. Even after applying my custom office theme, the color palette does not reflect my theme colors.

None of these locations have worked for me:

C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\Document Themes\Theme Colors

C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\Document Themes\

file:///Volumes/C/Users/username/Documents/

file:///Volumes/C/Users/username/Documents/Custom Office Templates/

Is there a way to get my custom office theme to work in Windows the way it does on my Mac?

Answer 1

The second choice on your list (**C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\Document Themes**) is the correct default location for a full Theme file as created by a Save As in PowerPoint. I tested your theme in Office 2007, 2010, 2013 and 2016 and it worked as expected in all versions.

Windows users can move their templates folder to a different location. You can check for this by opening Word and choose File>Options>Advanced>General, clicking on the File Locations button and checking the path beside User Templates. Document Themes is always a subfolder of the Templates folder, wherever it is located.

BTW, I noticed the logo in the theme was a little fuzzy. I've written a 2-part tutorial about making super-sharp logo files, you might find it useful: JPEG Logos? Fail! and Logo Production Secrets

Answer 2

Thanks for the kind words, I'm glad to help.

Answer 3

John - Your site and advice was invaluable. I successfully made a custom Office Theme that now is working in Word, PowerPoint and Excel on both Macs and PCs. I finished the work on Friday.

Monday morning I was tasked with updating a travel request form in Excel. In just one click all the fonts and shadings matched the new company branding. It literally saved me hours of work.

I replaced the fuzzy logo with a higher quality one I found on the branding site. Apparently they hadn't finished uploading all the new logos last week when I originally got the fuzzy version.

Answer 4

Yes, 2013 uses the same paths.

Answer 5

Thanks for replying John. I was hoping you or Steve would be the ones who reply because I trust you both implicitly.

You are kind. The logo is not just "a little" fuzzy. It's really fuzzy! Our communications department spent more than $300K US to consultants to change the colors and the logo. You think I'm going to tell them how bad it looks? Not!

I found higher quality logos, so I'll replace the bad ones with better ones.

Thanks for pointing me to the correct folder. Is the path the same in Windows Office 2013?