How to change the theme of Office 2013

(I'm not posting this "at you", ChecMark. I'm just using your "Reply" button. EDIT: Sorry if you got two notices......the incompetent programers of this website strip all the formatting of a post if it's pasted.  Even if it's Word and Text formatting. And that includes everything after the paste. ARG)

I can’t believe I’m going to say this but, I think I see what’s happened here and I actually feel bad for Microsoft. You’re going to think I’m an idiot but, keep reading after I say this: the problem here is Amazon.com.

I’ve lived and worked in downtown Seattle since 91. For the last 13 years I was an IT Director but, decided to take a sabbatical and quit. Since then, I’ve been getting calls like crazy offering job interviews. And that’s odd because I’m not some high-powered genius – I had 170 users. That’s “small-time” in IT.

Of course, I know people over in Redmond and I ran into one of them the other day. They also just quit their job and when I heard that, I started in on the problems with this cycle of products from MS….and I hadn’t known it but, this person was a……well, not entry level employee in the Office group and they mentioned something that I didn’t know (nothing “insider”, I’m just not going to repeat it because I don’t want to say something that can identify them: this is a MS web site).

Point is, what they said, coupled with the calls I’ve been getting, made me really look at Amazon. I would have seen it sooner but, I have a blind spot for Amazon. I’ve known them from the start. Around 97 I was a programmer at Seafirst/Bank of America working in the Columbia Tower. This “goofy” little company, Amazon, had some offices in the AT T Gateway Tower across the street. I’d be smoking at a coffee cart out front and these Amazon employees would be out there talking with each other like they were just getting everything in order for the billions of dollars that were about to pour on them. I just “rolled my eyes” because I thought the business modal was idiotic and these morons were driving pedal-to-the-metal to bankruptcy court.

Now…..holy cow. Amazon is literally out-of-control-successful. When I look out my apartment window, the view is difficult to believe. Amazon has taken over the South Lake Union district of Seattle and is building like crazy. They are throwing piles of cash everywhere. If you don’t live in Seattle, you’re just not going to understand what I’m saying. Seeing Microsoft and Starbucks grow up was really impressive but what Amazon is doing is once in a lifetime. I mean, I’ve had a front row seat to something most people on the planet will never see.

And all this growth is a talent drain to the rest of the region. Quality employees are being picked-off left and right by Amazon and no one has the money to stop it. And we’re talking IT talent: programmers…project managers….network architects….server monkeys….all of it. It’s not that companies like MS are ignoring customers, they’re just suddenly having huge staffing issues, and it’s Amazon’s fault.

And you don’t have to believe me, I can prove it. Go to Amazon.com and find their “Careers” page. Type “Manager” in the search box, select “Seattle, WA” as the region, and hit “Search”….I don’t know what it is now but when I checked last week the results were 20 jobs per page and..…..wait for it…….72 pages.

You didn’t understand what I just said. Read that paragraph again and extrapolate what it means. Seriously. It defies belief. I don’t think MS has the staffing to fix non-critical problems, right now. Problems like this infuriating lack of contrast that’s causing me to lose eye-focus as I type this in Word.

It's laughable, but tragic, that the only response from anyone at Microsoft is that they are monitoring "pain points". This is the perfect description of what they are putting us through, yet they do nothing. The Office Team is clearly showing their utter contempt for customers when they post that they are not looking at releasing any new themes right now. People are rolling back to previous versions. Companies aren't "upgrading" because their staff hate the lack of themes. Companies are incurring the huge expense of rolling back to previous versions because their staff hate Office 2013. 

This has to be costing Microsoft millions of dollars. How can they sit back and do nothing? This is a crisis of credibility. Companies are actively searching for alternatives, like Google Docs. Microsoft is clearly making a lot of customers question their loyalty to them. The tone of posts has gone from frustration to anger, yet Microsoft just keeps fanning the flames with the same old arrogant response. Hard to believe any company in this economy can afford to insult its loyal customers this way.

And let's not even get into their decision to eliminate the autocorrect option for spelling errors. Jackasses.