Change The Default Color Scheme In Office 2007
The Microsoft Office 2007 color scheme certainly fits in Windows Vista, but fortunately for those of us unhappy with so much light blue, the color scheme can be changed.
This tip works the same whether you are using Access, Word, Excel, or PowerPoint – if you change the color in one, it changes the color in all Microsoft Office applications. Since the steps are the same we will use Word as the example.
Click on the Microsoft Office Button then click on Word Options.
Click on Popular and and then use the “Color Scheme” drop down arrow to choose between Blue, Silver or Black then click OK.
For this I chose Black, you can choose whichever color you prefer (silver looks pretty good). Now if you open Access, Word, Excel, or PowerPoint the color will be changed also. But what about Outlook? Keep reading!
Oddly enough, you have to open a new email in Outlook 2007 in order to see the Microsoft Office button. Once you are there, then you can click on “Editor Options”, and then follow the same steps as above.
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Outlook is changed at the same time as the other office 2007 products. change any product disply option and it changes all office 2–7 products ( at least in 2007 Ultimate).
can it be changed to colours other than balck, blue or silver?
G –
Not that I am aware of without 3rd party software.
How to I change the color of a hyperlink in 2007 Powerpoint?
…I the past few weeks, since I switched to Office2007, every time I opened any of the Office applications I would gag & wanted to throw when looking @ the default hospital-blue…
Now I only see “BLACK? and feel as if I was born-again!!!!
Thanks How2Geek Team!!!
P.S. I have Office Ultimate 2007… when I changed the color under Word, it also changed it on Outlook..
So much for wanting to be colorfully creative!! This could be a Russian product before perestroika and glasnost!! Bland blue or silver and dreary black….. and you cannot vary between products… how very un-Microsoft.
On earlier versions of Word, I used a dark blue background. It helped tremendously (I have sight problems). Can something like this no longer be done now???
Thnx.
dlm
What third party applications can change it to other colors?
That’s easy enough, but does anyone know how I can set the color scheme globally across my network. The ADM templates for Office 2007 do not provide any settings for doing this. Is this setting stored in the registry, and if so… where???
I have spent a considerable amount of time branding our desktop experience here, right down to the very last detail, so it is quite annoying that I can’t control the colour of Office 2007.\
Any ideas?
Found it: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\Theme. Because it’s a user key it’ll have to be a logon script.
@Stephen
Very interesting… I might have to do something with that, thanks!
OK, Well here is the Custom ADM Template I have written for Group Policy. Works a treat:
CLASS USER
CATEGORY “Custom Office 2007 Config”
POLICY “Color Scheme”
KEYNAME “Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common”
EXPLAIN “Allows you to control the Office 2007 Colour Scheme.”
PART “Pick the colour from the list” TEXT
END PART
PART “Color” DROPDOWNLIST
REQUIRED
VALUENAME “Theme”
ITEMLIST
NAME “Blue” VALUE NUMERIC 1
NAME “Silver” VALUE NUMERIC 2
NAME “Black” VALUE NUMERIC 3
END ITEMLIST
END PART
END POLICY
END CATEGORY
Hi, i am visually imparied and cannot see the Office 2007 color schemes.
I use high contrast black, and I can use Office XP without any problem (because Office XP uses the Windows colors),
Unfortunately, in Office 2007 I can only use one of the 3 color schemes available, and cannot modify them or create a new one that fits my needs.
Do you know if it is possible to create a new color scheme (i.e. by using any programming software)?
Thanks for your help.
I have a user in Alberto’s position. She cannot see the poor contrast screen elements in Office 2007. I knew Vista was guilty of this ’style’. I have to agree with my user that the visibility is poorer than before, even with good eyes.
Where are the add-on products that can improve the visual appearance?
I couldn’t care less about the menu bar which is the only thing that changes with the color setting. With a program like Outlook with so much on the screen (I have mine set to folders left, emails middle, and the reading pane on the right), everything looks washed out/faded. I can barely see the pale blue flags and boxes to the right of the emails or the highlight bar.
I am unable to continue with the 2007 set up I need a blue page screen and white text. I get migrains and can see the white page with the black text will give me head aches.
who do I contact to get an add in to correct this problem?
Never had a problem with word before. only got the horrible programme because i can’t open stuff people send me in word 2007.
Similar to a few of you I do not like the color schemes. It is MUCH harder to see than previous version. The contrast and definition is just not there. Performance-wise, 2003 is faster at least for the applications and previous files I have as well. Have had more crashes and problems in 2007 than in 2003.
Anyways, there is supposed to be a download for 2003 that enables support for files saved in 2007. I have not tried and it states you need to have all high priority updates current but you’re welcome to read about and try it…
http://www.microsoft.com/downl.....laylang=en
This is not useful. Office is using non-standard colors, and one can NOT tell the difference between active and non active windows. How do I get the colors to match the “Windows” standard that I’ve selected? (65 million colors, and you can choose THREE)
I don’t have sight problems but I find all the Office 2007 colour schemes are hard on the eyes due to the low contrast. For this reason I am sticking to Office 2003 with the add-in to open Office 2007 files and Mozilla Thunderbird for e-mail.
I found out about the color scheme early on after installing MS Office 2007 Pro, but right now, for the life of me I do not know how to correct my Office Button color, which is basically Black on a White background. And the appearance of Word 2007 is also unusual, it has a green border instead of the black scheme. I do hope that my image code will be displayed in this comment box. If not, I’ll provide the direct html link to my photobucket album beneath it.
Image code: [IMG]http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m51/Sniper121/MS%20Office/MSOfficeWord2007-OfficeButtonBW.jpg[/IMG]
Direct link: http://i101.photobucket.com/al.....ttonBW.jpg
Html code:
I want to get it back to default color mode, so if you know how, please let me know.
Thanks,
Sniper121
I found the solution to my question above. My desktop display appearance settings were changed by a family member, and they used the Display Properties\Appearance tab to change the look of desktop apps to Windows Classic style Buttons and Windows, with the High Contrast White color scheme, and the two color choices for the active title bar was set to Teal. I changed it back to the appearance settings I liked and it solved my problem with Office looking like the picture in the Direct Link above.
I have normal vision but found the new low contrast Office 7 stuff just ridiculous – really hard to see – I pity folks with vision problems, and the vaunted “accessibilty options” give us over-the-top contrast stuff – just a mid setting of say double the contrast would be good. Meanwhile thanks for showing me how to set it all to black – that’s a ton better. Nice if microsoft gave us a choice of two colors, any intensity, instead of just misty shades of light blue – gad!
I can’t beleive what an apalling choice of colors Microsoft have given us in Office 2007. It would take nothing for them to change this and I hope they realise how ridiculous they are for not doing so.
One solution I have found is Open Office.
In the options under Appearance you can change to nearly any color.
The new version 3.0 will read any office document even .docx ect.
It is very similar to office 2003 in many ways and a short learning curve compared to office 2007.
It even has the traditional menu based interface as office 2003.
It is also free and open source.
It can also run at the same time as office 2007.
Everyone in my organization is starting to move to Open Office because of these and other problems.
I personally have wasted tens of hours trying to figure out haw to do things which were simple before.
I also get headaches with the standard 3 color settings, black is better but after an hour or so I may as well go home.
Just my opinion, take it or leave it.
Rick
I’ve just been moved from Office 2003 to Office 2007 at work. Whilst a change in what one is used to is always a jolt, I found that it was mostly just a matter of getting used to where things were. The one thing I can’t cope with is not being able to change colour scheme from the useless 3 that are built in. They are obviously designed by those wanting to make a fashion statement, who don’t actually need to do any work using Office. Is Microsoft trying to prepare us for the next version of Office where perhaps they will have the ultimate simplicity: a choice of only black text on a black background, light grey text on a light grey background, or sky blue text on a sky blue background?
I’m glad I use Open Office at home. If anyone has found a way to change colour schemes from the unworkable ones supplied, I’d love to know. Searches so far have just turned up sites like this which suggest we’re stuck with the colour schemes provided.
try this: Go to tab Page Layout then Page Color, choose which color fit you! dark background will automatically change your font color tobe white.
^^^^ That changes the _document_. Folks here want to change the appearance of the program window itself.
The irony is, a well-behaved “standard” Windows app should ALWAYS have the option of “no” color scheme, that is, it inherits the colors selected in the Windows Display Properties. So M$ manages to violate both its own application standard and the ADA in one swell foop.
Will they ever learn when to leave well enough alone? And no, this isn’t meant as a snide comment, it’s an honest question. Will there be a version of Office that simply does nothing with colors, and lets the OS settings prevail? Or might there be some hidden registry setting or the like that makes this happen?
Paul, I think the answer to your question is OpenOffice – http://download.openoffice.org. I’ve used it quite a bit on Linux, and after just experiencing the travesty that is Office 2007 on a work laptop running XP, I’m installing it there as well.
great !!! excectly what i was searching for.
thanks
Thank you Ed!!! That helps my eyes tremendously and still prints normally.
Ed wrote: Go to tab Page Layout then Page Color, choose which color fit you! dark background will automatically change your font color to be white.
I found a way to change the Office 2007 application colors in Vista.
Go to Control Panel/Personalization/Window Color and Appearance, and at the bottom click on “Open classic appearance properties for more color options”. Choose a color scheme you want to modify, and then click on the “Advanced” button. From there you can customize the workspace colors, and they will update in Office after choosing apply from the “Appearance” tab.
Is there a way to make the Page Layout, Page Color default to a dark color like black? I can change it for each document but I want it to default to black page color so I don’t burn my eyeballs out with the white background.
I think you have to save as a template Chris. That way you can open the template and it will stay with the page the colour you want.
Thanks ed makes my eyes feel much better.
Good comments and tips here. It’s great to get rid of the hospital blue. Thanks. However, I find it interesting that the author of this page chose the same abominable color for the Meet the Author and Leave a Comment boxes. Hmmmm.
James is wrong. The procedure he describes using the control panel does NOT affect Office 97. I don’t think he understands the problem. Office 2007 is awful. I wish I had never had it installed when I bought my computer. Why can’t I change the colour to what I want – or at least to those Windows has – as set by the personalisation in the Control Panel?
Office 2007 is great.
It offers more customization and tweaking previous versions.
And much better and than the open office crap.
Regardsless of what has been mentioned above I do like MsOffice.
Only thing that could be better is that they should make it more modular in design. In a way that I can remove modules that I do not need and .
Tom,
Probably you’re right and it allows for even more customization than before. However, what bothers me is that I am not able to change the appearance to match the color schema selected in the control panel of Windows XP, so that I have a standard appearance of any window on my screens and, even more important, I don’t fatigue my eyes as it happens now with any of the three “candyland” color schemes.
If you could explain me and all the other people in pain how to achieve this with Office 2007, I’d really appreciate it and take your point.
Thanks!
Thank you for this tip. The default color was killing my eyes.
Does anyone know if there is a way to change the contrast? They way it is now, with my perfect eyesight even i have trouble distinguishing which tabs are highlighted. Very annoying! There is such a thing as too much style you know.
We cleared up a lot of trouble reading Office 2007 files by deselecting:
“Always use ClearType” box under the Options – Popular window in an application. ClearType made it fuzzy with poor contrast.