Applying Themes in PowerPoint, Word, and Excel 2011 -- Mac
Author: Geetesh Bajaj
Product/Version: PowerPoint 2011, Word 2011, and
Excel 2011 for Mac
OS: Apple Mac OS X
Date Created: December 29th 2010
Last Updated: December 29th 2010
Excerpt/Capsule: Learn how to apply Themes in PowerPoint, Word, and Excel 2011 for Mac.
Applying a Theme to All Slides in a Presentation
Applying a Theme to Selected Slides in a Presentation
Applying Themes in Microsoft Word and Excel
Applying a Theme to All Slides in a Presentation
You have already seen how to apply Themes in different applications of Office 2008 for Mac. Now let us see how to repeat the same process in Office 2011. Here also you will find plenty of built-in Themes which you can choose from. These Themes can be found under Themes tab of the Ribbon, shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Office Themes
Follow these steps to apply a new Theme to a PowerPoint presentation:
- Open an existing presentation, or create a new one in
PowerPoint 2011.
- Now access the Themes tab of the Ribbon. As you
can see in Figure
1, there are
thumbnail previews of several Themes available within the Themes
gallery. To view the drop-down Themes gallery, hover the cursor over
the Theme thumbnail previews and you'll be able to see a down-arrow
button (highlighted in red in Figure
2). Click on this button and the Themes gallery appears in drop-down
mode (refer again to Figure 2).

Figure 2: Themes gallery in drop-down mode
- In this gallery, the Theme that the existing presentation is based
upon is visible under the top section named This
Presentation (refer
to
Figure 2 above). You can also see a collection of many
other built-in Themes. To view more previews, use the scroll bar
on the right side of the gallery. Once you find the Theme that you
want to apply, just click on its thumbnail and the Theme gets
applied to the entire presentation.
Tip - You can also apply any PowerPoint presentation or template as a Theme -- even if it doesn't show up within the Theme gallery. To do that, click the Browse Themes option that you will find at the bottom of the drop-down Themes gallery (refer to Figure 2 above), and navigate to wherever the given presentation, template, or Theme is located. Then click Apply.
Applying a Theme to Selected Slides in a Presentation
Follow these steps to apply a Theme to selected slides in a presentation:
- Open an existing presentation, or create a new one in PowerPoint
2011.
- Select the slides in Slide Sorter view (or in the Slides and Outline
Pane on the left side of the interface) that you
want to apply a new Theme to.
- With these slides selected, access the Themes tab
of the Ribbon. Choose any Theme within the Themes gallery and
right click on it's thumbnail. In the context menu that appears,
click on Apply to
Selected Slides option, as shown in Figure
3.

Figure 3: Apply Selected Slides option
- This will apply the selected Theme only to the selected slides as shown
in Figure 4. Instead of bringing up the context menu
you can also simply click on the thumbnail to apply that Theme to all
of the selected slides.

Figure 4: Theme applied to the selected slides
Applying Themes in Microsoft Word and Excel
The same Themes that you apply in PowerPoint can also be applied in Word and Excel -- in both of these programs, the way of accessing Themes gallery is different from that of PowerPoint. Follow these steps to apply a new Theme to a Word document or an Excel workbook in 2011 for Mac:
- Open an existing Word document or Excel spreadsheet, or create
a new one.
- Access the Home tab of the Ribbon, and locate the Themes group
on the extreme right, as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Themes group within the Home tab of the Ribbon in Excel 2011
The Themes group looks a little different for Word 2011, as shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6: Themes group within the Home tab of the Ribbon in Word 2011
- Now click on the Themes icon (highlighted in red in Figure
5 above for Excel) to reveal the drop-down Themes gallery, as
shown in
Figure 7.

Figure 7: Themes gallery in drop-down mode
- As you can see above in Figure 7, Office is the default Theme for new documents and workbook (note the highlight surrounding the active Theme). In this gallery, click on the thumbnail of any other Theme to apply it to the open document or workbook. If you want to view more Themes, use up and down arrows within the bottom area of the scrollbar (highlighted in red in Figure 7 above).
When you apply a Theme in PowerPoint, you add a set of coordinated backdrops, layouts, fonts, effects, colors, etc. Let's just say you want to change just the colors and fonts, and retain everything else in your presentation -- can you do that? Sure you can -- and I'll show you how to do that soon.
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