Visio Custom Theme Colors

Question

I have the same question as this one:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_visio-mso_win10-mso_2016/new-theme-colors/020a5d79-14d1-4c1e-a79c-a3ff89da02c2

It is not entirely clear from any documentation that I've seen how the theme colors are actually used. Even Visio MVP gurus struggle with this.

To rephrase the question:

• I'd like to develop stencils and templates that adheres to the corporate styleguide for my colleagues. When developing stencils and templates, how do I make new masters themable and compatible with Microsoft supplied stencils and templates?

As far as I can tell, to do this, I need an answer to this questions:

• How will each color in a built-in or custom color theme affect existing and new shapes and connectors?

I've more or less figured out about Black, White, Background, Dark and Light, but I get confused when creating a new color theme from one of the built-in themes immediately changes Line and Fill color for document masters and shapes.

To reproduce:

1. Create a new Visio document from a template with Basic Shapes, for example a Basic Diagram
2. Drag a few masters from the stencil to the page, and add a connector.
3. Observe that shape and connector Line color is Accent1, shape Fill color is also Accent1. In the Office theme, Accent1 is a dark blue.
4. Apply the Simple theme, Variant 1. Observe that shape and connector Line color is Black, Fill color is White.
5. With Simple, Variant 1 theme selected, create new theme colors. Don't actually change anything in the New Theme Colors dialog, just click OK.
6. Observe that shape Fill color is still White, but Line color is now Accent1, and connector Line color is something I can't quite identify, maybe a dark shade of Accent1.

What is the logic behind this? Is there a predictable pattern to this?

I am familiar with ShapeSheets and using VBA to inspect stuff not visible in the UI, but I can't figure out what is going on here. As it is, it would actually be easier to provide old school style-based masters, but I do see some advantages to themes. Only it has to work in a predictable fashion, otherwise people will resort to applying pre-2007 local styling.

kind regards

Peter Ring

Answer 1

Hi there,

When you search for information about themes in Visio, most of the hits are at the level of "Apply a professional look to your drawings with themes". I'm becoming allergic to the phrase "apply a professional look" ;)

But John Goldsmith has a number of articles about Visiothemes, I read them all.

In particular, this article helped me understand dynamic styling. But obviously, I still have a lot to learn ;)

Another great Visio MVP, David J Parker, also has some articles about themes.

Yet another great Visio MVP, Chris Roth, has a forum that is fine source of deep knowledge about Visio esoterica:

• The VisGuy forum

More Visio gurus:

• https://mvp.microsoft.com/en-us/MvpSearch?ex=visio
• http://visio.mvps.org/

Visio product team blog:

• Visio Insights

Some other useful resources:

• Visio Step by Step
• Mastering Data Visualization with Microsoft Visio Professional 2016
• Using Visio 2010
• Microsoft Dev Center, Visio

The article that I miss would be titled "Designing visio stencils and templates that support themes". The best hit, Designing Shapes for Use with Themes in Visio 2007, has some information that is still very useful, but is otherwise outdated wrt Visio 2016.

regards

Peter

Answer 2

Hi, Peter !

Did you read article Customizing themes in Visio 2013 by John Goldsmith (MVP) ?

Answer 3

Peter, thank you for your excellent collection of hyperlinks about Visio's themes !

You can find my name in Visio MVP list :)

But I am not so great MVP (just first year), also I create documents without any themes (just black-white).

Sorry I can't help you anymore :(