Theme Builder
Author: Geetesh Bajaj
Product/Version: Microsoft PowerPoint 2007
OS: Microsoft Windows XP / Vista
Date Created: February 1st 2008
Last Updated: February 27th 2009
Excerpt/Capsule:
The Theme Builder is an application created by Microsoft as part of CodePlex, Microsoft's open source project hosting web site.
The full name of the application is Open XML Theme Builder, but for reasons of simplicity I'll call it Theme Builder throughout this series of pages.
Theme Builder was first publicly announced by Senior Product Lead for PowerPoint, Ric Bretschneider on the MSDN site on December 17th 2007.
With the Theme Builder, you can create Office Themes from scratch that cover all the basics.
Download a copy of the latest release from the CodePlex site... (see Figure 1)
Figure 1: The CodePlex page for Open XML Theme Builder (February
2008)
You'll end up downloading a ZIP file that when unzipped contains a Setup.exe file -- activate this file to begin the setup for Theme Builder.
Launch Theme Builder through the Theme Builder shortcut in the Windows Start Menu. Figure 2 shows the Theme Builder interface
Figure 2: The Theme Builder interface
The Theme Builder includes five tabs that lets you work with different theme elements:
- Colors and Fonts
- Line Styles
- Fill Styles
- Effects Styles
- Background Styles
In the next series of pages, I'll show you how you can use Theme Builder to create amazing themes using these elements.
Note: Do remember however that Theme Builder does not let you edit individual PowerPoint nuances like Slide Layouts, placeholders, etc. For that you'll have to apply the theme to a PowerPoint presentation, edit the layouts and placeholders inside PowerPoint, and then export the changes to a Theme file again.
Previous Topic: Saving Theme
Next Topic: Theme XML Files
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