How to change the theme of Office 2013

Folks,

This is absolutely RIDICULOUS!!!  This thread has been going on for over a year and there is not even a hint of any consideration from Microsoft other than "We are looking at the waters".

Personally, I chimed in back in February, 2013 with several suggestions on how to possibly ease the issue.  I even spoke with Microsoft Technical Support with no results.  With my eyes hurting I went back to my friendly Best Buy and had them unload Office 2013.  I then went out on the web and found a copy of Office 2010 which, of course, works perfectly for me.

Microsoft needs to take heed of the growing cadre of disgruntled users who have the power to MAKE or BREAK a software offering.  As for me, I will NEVER blindly procure any Microsoft Software product without making a trial run with an evaluation copy.

Ed Taylor

I agree the themes for 2013 are awful and I would prefer the themes for 2010.

Considering how long this thread has gone on, with no response from Microsoft, I suggest that forum be renamed "The Hand", as in, Talk to the Hand. It is painfully clear that we are all simply wasting our breath expecting that anyone at Microsoft will actually pay any attention to its customers. 

After getting my much anticipated Dell laptop, then discovering the disaster of Windows 7 and Office 2013, I too called Microsoft. Before I sent my shiny new computer back I was assured that Microsoft was well aware of the backlash and that the release of the previous themes was "imminent". Yeah, right. Who are they kidding? The only post from Microsoft here was "we are not planning to release any new themes at this time."

A more truthful post would have been, "While we at Microsoft are well aware of the thousands of complaints about Office 2013, we would remind you that, under the leadership of Tim Allen, we have also blown search engines, smart phones, mobile apps, social media, music streaming and been forced to backtrack on Windows 8. Why would you expect that Office 2013 would be any different? We have set the bar so low now that no one could crawl under it. By ignoring your complaints we are simply following the new direction of failure after failure set by Mr. Allen. Please don't expect us to suddenly start listening to our customers now."

They should do like with Visual Studio 2012...

OK deliver crappy bright white theme... BUT allow the community to build their own skins !!

For VS2012, the top-5 favourites custom skins alone were accessed  993509 times.  Everybody is satisfied.

Even Android free mail apps allows full customization of the GUI.

We'd expect a "professional-grade" and "expensive" product like Outlook to be customizable.

All employees in our company decided to stick with Office 2010, with black theme enabled.