How to change the theme of Office 2013

Thank you for the feedback on Office’s new look. We are actively collecting, sorting and reading through feedback on Office 2013’s design and User Experience. As the audience for Office 2013 grows, we are being mindful of patterns and pain points that emerge from user feedback. While we do not have any additional Themes planned at this time, it is an issue we are watching very closely.

Well - December 2012 and I installed this yesterday - 6 May 2014, and still the same 3 stupid colours linked to a multitude of childish 'themes' for the top right corner.

This is nothing short of disgraceful disregard of your paying customers.

I actually use MS on my Mac, I had Office 2010 and it looked beautiful - if only Office Mac 2011 looked similar (I have that too) I'd be even happier. But no, I needed Office 365 to use Office on my iPad so I paid up, I loaded Office 2013 up on my iMac and within a day had removed it to go back to Office 2010 to find that I can't directly modify embedded spreadsheets in OneNote with 2010. I loaded 2013 up again today to have another go just to make OneNote work but I'm now not sure if I care enough about that program to struggle through with this sheer awfulness.

Another comment surrounded MS's difficulty in hiring quality staff to work on 'non-critical' functions - I'd contest that with 18 pages of people, some of whom appear to hold or influence purse strings for their company, you may wish to drop the arrogance that surrounded you with Win8 (this is how it works so suck it up!) and do the right thing by the people who are paying for by treating the UI as a 'critical function' and resourcing the changes- you must be losing more than it would cost. I'm also amazed that disability groups haven't gone after you.

It's truly appalling to release software in this condition and much much worse to actively ignore the issues.

Shame, I was getting to like MS stuff again - in particular because of Office 2010, professional looking, easy to work with and despite it being a Win program, looked rather good on my Mac under Parallels. I genuinely can't see me extending this Office 365 subscription and I'm only glad that others on the web are selling it for a lot less than MS.

Steve Oliver

Enjoy? your'e kidding, right? How can anyone "enjoy" light grey? It's always great to get support and help from people such as yourself. In fact, I, as we all do rely in it greatly, but in regards to the horrible, and headache provoking colors of Office 2013, how can anyone "Enjoy"

I want to toss in my "two cents worth" as long as you are collecting comments. The look is horrid. I have had copies of the last four versions of Office prior to 2013. Metro may be intended to be retro, but I find it repulsive, and so do LOTS of others from the comments I have read. I am so glad I got my copy under a HUP offer, really cheap, or I would be REALLY ticked. Open Office looks like this and it is FREE.

Is there a way to set the default theme through the OCT?  I want my users to see the light grey theme by default in all Office 2013 applications, as I am suppressing the "First Run" dialog via the OCT.  I looked through the user settings listing and did not see a setting to do this.

Yes in OCT, go to "Modify user settings" and expand Microsoft Office 2013 > Global Options, Customize and you will find the "Default UI Theme" setting.

Enjoy