How to change the theme of Office 2013

I know this is an old post and I didn't read all the replies but here are the registry keys to set the default theme color. keys listed darkest to lightest.

HKU\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Common\UI Theme: 0x00000001

HKU\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Common\UI Theme: 0x00000001

HKU\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Common\UI Theme: 0x00000000

All I can suggest is to do what I did.  I rolled back Office 2013 and reloaded Office 2010 on all my computers.  I've told everyone that I work with NOT to install Office 2013 for all the reasons cited in this blog.  In the meantime I'm seriously reviewing other office suites.  It may be time to switch.  BTW, my experience with Office 2013 has also kept me from moving over to Windows 8 on all of my computers.  That's a few hundred dollars more that Microsoft has lost. 

Heard yesterday that Microsoft has been putting their energy into a version of MS Office that runs on iPads and iPhones.   They gotta be crazy if they think I'm going to install anything from MS on my mobile devices after this experience. 

fightergator

Come on Microsoft!!

17 pages of nothing but complains and still no more themes???

The whole industry is addicted, like a bunch of street-corner junkies, to change for change's sake.

I understand that there is a rational element to periodically sprucing up the appearance of things, in that customers like to know that a given product is being kept up-to-date. The problem is that MS (and not just MS, believe me,) can't seem to grasp that whole "baby-bathwater" thing, to say nothing of the concept of "subtlety." If your exciting, gosh-gee-whiz change-for-change's-sake is not just an annoying aesthetic reversion to kindergarten (more on that in a minute,) but also screws up actual functionality for no identifiable reason, then what you've got is a gosh-gee-whiz... fail.

What I hadn't figured out at first, but which is now clear, is that this Microsoft product-self-destruct "upgrade" - as seen in Office 2013 - is an offshoot of the noxious Windows 8 OS.

Which is to say: Universally-hated garbage.

For whatever reason, Microsoft's Operating Systems seem to alternate:

Great - Garbage - Great - Garbage - Great - Garbage.

or respectively,

Windows 98SE - Windows 2000 - Windows XP - Windows Vista - Windows 7 - Windows 8.

So hopefully Windows 9 will discard basically 100% of that repulsive Windows 8 miscue, and become another 98SE, XP or 7? Truthfully, Microsoft could've saved itself a ton of development money, and its customers a ton of aggravation, and just stuck with 98SE. It was stable, functional, and hassle-free. Let the voyeur-fascists at NSA go pound sand - we do not need or want a brand-spankin' new OS version every 2.1 years or whatever it is, and if the government fascists want to impose their Jack-Secret backdoors into computer operating systems, then let them hack their way in like the rest of the world's criminals. But I digress.

Perhaps I'm p*ssing against the wind, but I do not own Apple products and will not, under any circumstances, give Apple Inc. so much as the steam off my spit on a winter sidewalk, ever. Period. Full stop.

Which means that I do not do iPhones, I do not do iPads, I do not do anything even remotely resembling them. I still use a flip-phone, righteously. I use Windows Operating Systems - the sane ones - righteously.

Aside from my utter contempt for Apple as a company in general and for its neo-fascist CEO in particular, a big part of why I want nothing to do with a Stupid Phone ("smart" is the new stupid,) is because I do not care to spend the better part of the rest of my life wiping fingerprint-smudges off of "touch screens."

I can see the practical argument for touchscreens on small-screen devices like phones, but... on computers?!? Umm, no.

Guys, I grew out of fingerpainting by roughly my first month out of kindergarten, and think about it: What the reversion from keyboards to "touchscreens" represents - and that whole "See the big green block; Push the green block to see Spot run; See the big purple block; Push the big purple block to see Jane run" control scheme - is a reversion to kiddie fingerpainting, and the intellectual level associated therewith. Sorry guys, but I'm all grown up now. Which means I can type, and that my basic motor skills are up to the task of running a mouse.

The only electronic gadget I own that has a touchscreen is an e-book reader, and even with a device you only have to touch to flip pages, it still p**sses me off to have to scrub the grease off of that thing every 20 minutes. Do we need this childish garbage? Ummm, no.

And just don't get me started on Orwoogle, or that totalitarian-wannabe creep Eric Schmidt.

/rant