Has anyone noticed that Themes are now missing?

Anonymous

Has anyone noticed that themes disappeared from all Word, Excel, and PowerPoint?

I had Wood Type and Banded the other day. However, they have disappeared from the list of themes, along with many other themes. Any idea on why this occured?

Specifications

Operating System: Windows 8.1

Office: Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus (15.0.4667.1002)

EDIT - 1/20/15

I updated the Title and original post to state theme(s) instead of template(s). I apologize for any confusion.

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous

Can you add the Parrallax theme to your one drive so I can download it. The dropbox you gave is no longer there.

thanks.

Short answer: I thought I was going to have to say no because my 2013 systems don't have all the themes available. But I was able to scare up a bunch of them, so they've been added to my OneDrive folder. http://1drv.ms/1yrdZRq

Long answer: For those of you just coming into this thread, a bunch of themes have been missing from the PowerPoint Start screen. (This is the same screen you can also access by choosing File | New in PowerPoint.)

Note: The themes that usually show on the PowerPoint Start screen are actually superthemes. Superthemes are like "regular" themes, but they give you variants. Variants are the options you see when you click one of the themes in the Start screen and get that dialog with different color options, pattern options, etc. You also see these variants on the Design tab of the Ribbon.

If you're missing the superthemes, you can get them here on my OneDrive: http://1drv.ms/1yrdZRq

Download the THMX files. Do NOT open them and save them; this will strip out the variants. Instead, just download them and put them in this folder: C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\Document Themes. The superthemes must be placed here in order for the variants to be available to presentations based on the superthemes.

To use them, open PPT. The themes may or may not show on your start screen. If they're there, you can click on the theme and you'll see the dialog box where you can select one of the variants. Otherwise, click CUSTOM and then the Document Themes folder. The themes should show up there. Click a theme to open that dialog where you can begin a new presentation based on the theme or one of its variants. Change variants on the Design tab if you wish.

Here's the available files. The ones I added today, some are repeats of ones that were already available. They're named like TM########[[fn=ThemeName]].thmx because I grabbed them from live "managed content" folders, and that's how they were named there. You shouldn't have to rename them.

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106 additional answers

Anonymous

2015-01-14T22:24:09+00:00

Templates came back on my system last week, but not for my students. Yesterday I had all 27 design themes in PowerPoint, and today I am back to 9. In my class of 14 students, only one of them has all design themes today.
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Anonymous

2015-01-14T22:17:01+00:00

It just changed back on my computer to the old version today 01/14, and now all themes and colors are available. Is it fixed for everyone else too? OR should we count on another random such incident any day?
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Steve Rindsberg 99,176 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2015-01-11T16:14:52+00:00

MS is aware of the problem and investigating it. For now, there's a workaround that might help.

Start PowerPoint, create a new presentation (doesn't matter what template).

Use the DESIGN tab to choose and apply a different template.

Quit PowerPoint (it shouldn't matter whether you save the new presentation or not).

I'd quit ALL Office applications as well.

Set your computer's clock ahead by at least one month. Toss in a few days just to be safe.

Start PPT again, give it a little time to settle down; it might be (we hope) trying to download the missing templates. You might need to start it, let it sit, then restart after a few minutes.

Let us know in a reply here if this helps make more templates available.
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Anonymous

2015-01-10T23:49:10+00:00
I am currently having the exact same issue.

At some random point over the last few weeks I was suddenly down to 9 themes in all office programs. I'm currently in a college course that needs specific themes to follow tutorials, and for the instructor to grade them properly.

Less than 50% of my class has all the themes, but as time passes, more classmates are having the same problem. Furthermore, the entire school is suffering from the same problem. There about about 100 of more than 200 computers that can still access the themes
- and that number is falling.
The strange part is:

I know for a fact that the files were present on my computer when the themes were available, but at some point they were removed from my computer, and they are no longer on my hard drive. I am the only user of my computer.

My system is a Windows 7 64-bit W/ Office Pro 2013 64-bit. My office 2010 64-bit is unaffected. Un-install all versions of office/ restart/ re-install 2013/restart didn't work either.

I suspect an update may have caused this, but there is no way to really know for sure. I am still doing research, and I have been able to find some of the templates that I need to "wiggle" into place, but that is just a complicated workaround. I need a solid solution to this issue, but for now, my instructor is having to modify the tutorials built for this program.

If someone needs a workaround steps to get themes that you want, I can explain how to do it. Just reply to this post.
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