The search for themes from the design tab is gone

Question

The search for themes from the design tab is gone

Kevin Meagher 0

It looks like comments from 2023 indicate this was fixed on the Mac version of power point but I am on PPT 16.108.1 (365 subscription) and there for sure is NO search option. Is there a workaround to use and existing presentation as to apply to a new presentation?

Thank you

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3 answers

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Answer 1

The theme search box on the Design tab is not required to apply an existing presentation’s look to a new one. A practical workaround is to treat the existing file as a template and import slides into a new presentation that uses that theme.

On Mac, the supported approach is equivalent to the Windows steps below:

Create a new presentation and apply (or keep) the theme you want to use as the “destination” theme.
Open the existing presentation that already has the desired design.
In that existing file, select the slide thumbnails to reuse (all slides or just some).
Copy the selected slides.
Switch back to the new presentation and paste the slides, choosing the option that keeps the destination file’s theme (in Windows this is Use Destination Theme when pasting into the thumbnail pane).

This effectively uses the existing presentation’s theme as the base for the new file, without needing a Design‑tab theme search.

If the goal is simply to change or remove the current theme in a presentation (rather than search), this can still be done from Design → Themes, using the built‑in or custom themes shown in the gallery, or by browsing for a saved theme file.

References:

Answer 2

John Korchok 236K Volunteer Moderator

The Theme Search field should be showing in the upper right corner of the New panel:

PowerPoint Theme Search

You can open an existing file, select the Design tab and expand the Theme Gallery. At the bottom, choose Save Current Theme. This saves the theme elements of your file, but no sample slides.

Or you can use File>Save as Template to save an existing presentation as a template, which preserves more details of the original. When save, save it to the Themes folder instead of the default Templates folder. Then it will become visible in the Theme Gallery.

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Answer 3

Bob Jones AKA CyberTaz MVP 437.7K

I'm not sure what you mean by a search for Themes device. AFAIK there never was a specific tool for that purpose unless you're referring to a very old version of the program.

Perhaps this is what you're looking for"

User's image

If not, please provide a more explicit explanation of what you seek.

Mikael Lagerman 0 Reputation points

2026-08-26T09:00:59.2133333+00:00

The illustration above is from the PowerPoint application, but the issue here is when opening a PowerPoint file located in SharePoint and working on the ppt still in SharePoint. Then the same Themes menu shows only existing themes and no browse options.

I want to use the Theme.thmx file stored on local disk or/and in SharePoint.
John Korchok 236K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator

2026-08-26T16:00:00.57+00:00

You are replying to an old thread about a different version of PowerPoint running on a different platform. In the future, please start a new thread instead of tagging on to on old message.

PowerPoint for SharePoint is a version that runs on a web server, not your local hard disk. It does not have the capability of using custom themes that are used locally. It may be possible for your I.T. department to create a custom configuration that adds new themes to the SharePoint server.