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Applying Themes in PowerPoint, Word, and Excel 2008 -- Mac

Learn how to apply Themes in PowerPoint, Word, and Excel 2008 for Mac.

Author: Geetesh Bajaj

Product/Version: PowerPoint 2008, Word 2008, and Excel 2008 for Mac
OS: Apple Mac OS X

Date Created: December 28th 2010
Last Updated: December 28th 2010

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

Applying Themes in different applications under Office 2007 and Office 2010 for Windows has already been discussed in our previous tutorials. To do the same in Office 2008 for Mac, the procedure is little different. Here also you will find plenty of built-in Themes which you can choose from. These Themes can be found under Slide Themes tab in the Elements Gallery, as you can see in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Office Themes

Follow these steps to apply a new Theme to a presentation:

Open or create a new presentation in PowerPoint 2008.
Access the Slide Themes tab in the Elements Gallery. As you can see in Figure 1, there are thumbnail previews of several Themes available within the Themes gallery. To view more Themes you have to click on the right-arrow button towards the right side of the Themes gallery. (highlighted in red in Figure 1).
Move the cursor over any of the thumbnails, and the Theme name appears above the Browse button (Browse button is highlighted in red in Figure 2). Click a thumbnail, and the Theme gets applied to all slides in the presentation (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Theme applied to the 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 button towards the left of the Theme gallery (highlighted in red in Figure 2 above), and navigate to wherever the given presentation, template, or Theme is located. Then click Apply.

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Applying a Theme to Selected Slides in a Presentation

Follow these steps to apply a Theme to selected slides in a presentation:

Open a presentation in PowerPoint 2008.
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 Slide Themes tab in the Elements Gallery. Choose any Theme within the Themes gallery and click on its thumbnail. This will apply the Theme to the selected slides, as you can see in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Theme applied to selected slides

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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 applying Themes is little different from that of PowerPoint. Here Themes can be found under Formatting Palette. Follow these steps to apply a new Theme to a Word document or an Excel spreadsheet in 2008 for Mac:

Open an existing Word document or Excel spreadsheet, or create a new one.
Now to access Formatting Palette, choose View | Formatting Palette, as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4: Formatting Palette Option in Word and Excel

An alternative way to access the Formatting Palette is by clicking on the Toolbox icon within the Standard Toolbar (highlighted in red within Figure 5).

Figure 5: Toolbox icon in the Toolbar
This will bring up the Formatting Palette with different panels that you can see in Figure 6.

Figure 6: Themes gallery under Formatting Palette
Select the panel called Document Theme to access the Themes gallery that you can see highlighted in red in Figure 6. In this gallery choose any Theme and click on its thumbnail to apply it to the open document. If you want to view more Themes, click on down arrow button in the Themes gallery.

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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.