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.

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.

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.

Jennie,

I just want to chime in as another dissapointed user.  I work in my companies IS department and we are currently reviewing 2013 prior to rolling it out to the rest of the company.  I was amazed at how bright the "Dark" Gray theme is.  It really does cause eye strain and I am not about to start managing my monitor brightness when switching to and from MS Office!  I understand if Microsoft wishes to push a certain style as the default, but not allowing users the choice of a less abrasive color scheme is unacceptable.  Why is it that I can't customize the software that I use everyday?  The reason I have always enjoyed MS software over competitors (*cough* Apple *cough*) is because MS allowed users to customize software to how we liked it.  We were given options.  Now I understand there is the theory in the UI world that too many "options" isnt a good thing, but I think you have gone too far, MS.  Hide the options so people who get confused easily never see them.  As Office 2013 stands right now, it looks 50% complete. Apparently getting the product out was more important than getting the product right.

I like MS because they are\were everything Apple isn't... now I'm not so sure.

Thanks Jennie, it's good to have MSFT let us know what is going on (or not).

In regards to the theme colours, they are really all very bright compared to Office 2010. The dark theme in 2013 is more a mid grey than a dark grey, and on my laptop it is that shade of grey similar to the shade used in the screen gamma tuning dialog: as such it is also subject to a lot of visual variance depending on the viewing angle. So that shade of grey is kind of painful  (I'm sure there's probably lots of jokes going on at MSFT about the painful shades of grey)

There's other issues with Outlook 2013 such as the failure to properly synchronize with @Live accounts that are also known, and myself and others are still waiting for any feedback from MSFT on it, and some idea as to when it might or won't be fixed. From a business perspective, this isn't really acceptable: decisions have to be made, rollouts planned, or alternatives investigated. An indication of a time frame would really help a lot.

It would be nice if the Office/Outlook team would put together their triage notes, list the identified issues and indicate if/when a fix/update will be provided. Communication, please.

The dark grey isn't really that dark.   On my laptop it reminds me of the tuning the gamma colour, and is susceptible to variation in appearance depending on the tilt of the screen.  I find it relatively harsh on my eyes.

Is it possible to make custom themes or import the Dark theme from Outlook 2010 ?