Change Background color Theme Office 2013

Anonymous
2013-01-12T15:28:57+00:00

Has anyone come up with how to Change the Color on the Office 2013 Them from "gray".  Microsoft has really not been user friendly with Windows 8 or Office 2013 in enabling the user to change their environment.

I think Microsoft does not read these forum questions.  Otherwise, some of the technical people would be contacting their customers to gain feedback.

I am extremely disappointed in the Office 13 and Win8 programs. 

Anyone got any ideas?

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Anonymous
2013-01-13T13:21:44+00:00

Hi,

Thanks for posting in Microsoft Community. It is unfortunate that you are unable to locate the option in Office 2013 to change the theme of applications. Let me help you with the issue.

For the Office 2013 (RTM) version you may follow the below steps:

  1. Go to the File tab
  2. Click on Options
  3. Choose the General tab on the left
  4. Find the ‘O ffice Theme’ dropdown item
  5. Choose between White, Light Gray, and Dark Gray.

If you have Office 2013 preview version installed, then you have an option to change the background color by clicking on File, Options, General and under the group 'Personalize your copy of Microsoft Office', you may choose the background you wish to change to and click ok.

If you are using preview version of Office then you have a Smiley on the top right hand side of the application, you may click on it and send in your feedback.

I hope the above steps help. If you need any further assistance reply and we will be glad to assist you.

Thank you.

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242 additional answers

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-03-04T11:28:59+00:00

    Microsoft,

    Research has shown that up to 15% of the general population has some kind of difficulty with light sensitive vision ranging from mild to extremely severe. A significant port of the population who suffer from migraines are light sensitive too and find it some difficulty with light, and reading text on computer screens on white / light coloured backgrounds. The exact needs differ from person to person. This problem is also often comorbid with other disabilities and medical conditions such as Visual Stress / Irlen Syndrome, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome / ME, Dyslexia, Autism, Dyspraxia, ADD, Lupus, and a bunch of others, where light sensitivite vision is an issue. Also there are folk without medical conditions who are suffer from various types of light sensitive vision.

    The short of it is that we **need** to be able to customise the colours of our user interfaces for the software applications we use, to be able to use our computers in comfort and to be spared from splitting headaces and other negative side effects. For me personally, I need a black background with green text. The dark grey background setting for Outlook 2013 is way too bright and uncomfortable for me, and still gives me headaches (plus stops me from being able to read propertly). I need a black background. There is nothing dark about the so called dark grey setting in Outlook 2013. Please free up users of Outlook / Office 2013 to be able to select their own UI colours please. OpenOffice / LibreOffice does it well, so Microsoft, you certainly have more than adequate resources to do it even better.

    Microsoft User Experience / User Interface designers, please please please get your act together regarding UI Accessiblity and let us choose our own UI colours (text, background, etc) in your Software User Interfaces (Office, Windows, etc.) . By forcing your restrictive colour schemes on us, you are putting up a major barrier for us being able to use your software in comfort and even worse, are causing negative health side effects like headaches and migraines by defaulting to bright blinding white backgrounds.

    Glen

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-03-21T18:38:18+00:00

    The inability to change the theme background makes the 2013 products almost useless. I write for a living and spend half my time trying to figure out where the cursor is at on a page. As has been mentioned many times, Dark Gray does not create sufficient contrast. Whoever thought it a good idea to redesign this foundational aspect of the product needs to reassess their axioms. It needs to be fixed now.

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-03-23T15:09:28+00:00

    DARK GRAY IS SO DEPRESSIVE  LIGHT BLUE IS CALM. SUFFERING MY SELF FROM DEPRESSION  

    DARK GRAY LIGHT GRAY IS A NEGATIVE TO ME

    Dark****Dark color isrecommended to productivity, for sample cs6 ADOBE.  MICROSOFT WE THE PUBLIC DO NOT FALL UNDER THERE CRITERIA  SO WITH RESPECT A SIMPLE CHANGE TO COLOR  WOULD BE MOST GRATEFUL THANK-YOU

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-03-25T18:30:32+00:00

    The instructions you have posted were easy to find and setting to light or dark grey instead of the terribly painful white a snap. The problem I have is that this does not appear to be a global setting and is not retained when I reopen a doc, xls, whatever. This needs to change!

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