How to change the theme of Office 2013

You can change the theme in Office by clicking File > Account page in any Office product with the exception of Outlook. In Outlook, Click File > Office Account to change the theme.

There are three themes available in Office 2013:

White - Default

Light Gray

Dark Gray

For more information, view the page below:

Change the Office theme

The trouble is it does not stay that way.

I just cannot believe MS did this. I have to have it at work and I HATE it. I wish I could go back to 2010. For the first 3 months the theme stayed at dark grey. Outlook and Word open having defaulted to dark gray (which our IT guy had to set on the server so that it goes out to everyone) but on opening a document it reverts to the disgusting WHITE and then I have to go into File Options and change it back to dark gray EVERY DAY. It's just ridiculous. I, like everyone else, do not for the life of me understand what MS were thinking. Even worse than the theme is the QAT. My QAT runs across the whole screen and there's no colour. It's pathetic.

MICROSOFT, please listen to what everyone is saying and do something about this.

The earliest versions just had the white theme. After many complaints, they added the two slightly darker ones. They must think that they fixed it.

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.

I gave Microsoft feedback a long time ago when I was testing the Preview version of Office 2013. I told Microsoft that the new white theme is terrible, and it strains my eyes. I understand they were trying to minimalize it a little bit, but the outcome is plain ugly. Buttons seem to run together. The change in 2007 from gloss to matte was great, and everything looked clean. Everything was eye pleasing and easy to find.

In my feedback, I said that Microsoft needed to add a black color scheme like in Office 2010. Well, they basically ignored my feedback (the dark gray is still very light), and now people are staying with or reverting back to 2010, including myself. They still need to add a black theme as soon as possible (or change the light gray theme to the current dark gray theme and extremely darken the current dark gray theme). They should also add some themes with color to go hand in hand with Windows 8, or add an option for Office to match your system's window color that is set in Personalization.

Please, please, please add more themes for Office 2013!  I am having all of the same issues as reported by countless others on this thread.  The VERY LIMITED 3 themes are all causing me immense eye strain and a ton of extra clicking as I try to find where a window border is so I can move or resize it, or figure out which is even the active window.

I was forced to upgrade to Office 2013 by my employer, and I plan to plead with them to let me roll back to 2013 or to address this painful visual design.

Folks,

I piped into this thread on February 13, 2013 after going through the surprise of seeing just how bad the themes are for Office 2013.  After several conversations with the Microsoft support folks it became apparent that there is not a quick fix for this issue.  Bottom line, the themes are buried in the source code.  There ain't no "registry hack" or other quick fix for this.

My answer was to step back to Office 2010 which works fine for me.  I would encourage others that have this issue to consider making that change also.  No need to bang your head against the wall.  Microsoft is NOT going to fix this one in my view.  If you are tied to a corporate edition of Office 2013 you may want to put pressure on your administrators to back out and reinstall Office 2010.

Just my 2 cents worth.

Ed Taylor