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Applying Theme Colors and Theme Fonts in PowerPoint 2008 for Mac

Learn how to apply Theme Colors and Theme Fonts in PowerPoint 2008 for Mac.

Author: Geetesh Bajaj

Product/Version: PowerPoint 2008 for Mac
OS: Apple Mac OS X

Date Created: January 4th 2011
Last Updated: January 4th 2011

Why Just Colors and Fonts?
Applying Theme Colors
Applying Theme Fonts

Why Just Colors and Fonts?

When you apply a Theme to a PowerPoint presentation, it completely changes the appearance of the slides. This happens because a Theme contains a set of predefined Theme Colors, Theme Fonts, Theme Effects, Theme Backdrops, etc. However there may be scenarios in which you really don't require such a complete makeover or metamorphosis. In that case, you can still change only Theme Colors and Theme Fonts and leave all other Theme attributes unchanged. This will change just the colors and/or the fonts in your slides.

I showed you how you can apply a Theme in Office 2008 to a PowerPoint, Word, or Excel file within Mac -- in this tutorial, we'll look at how you can apply Theme Colors and Theme Fonts only in PowerPoint 2008.

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Applying Theme Colors

Each PowerPoint presentation includes at least one built-in Theme Color set -- in addition, PowerPoint installs many Theme Color sets by default. A Theme Color set comprises 12 individual coordinated colors that are carefully chosen using color science principles.

Remember -- Although the Theme Colors gallery only displays 8 colors (look at Figure 4 later on this page), be assured that each Theme Color set in fact has 12 colors -- the first two background/text colors are normally black and white -- so they are not displayed. In addition, the last two colors representing the colors of hyperlinked text are also not displayed in the Theme Colors gallery.

Follow these steps to choose and apply a set of Theme Colors:

Open or create a new presentation in PowerPoint 2008.
In PowerPoint 2008 for Mac, the galleries for applying Theme Colors and Theme Fonts can be found within the Formatting Palette. To access the Formatting Palette, choose View | Formatting Palette, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Access the Formatting Palette within View menu

An alternative way to access the Formatting Palette is from the Standard Toolbar -- just click the Toolbox icon shown in Figure 2 below (highlighted in red).

Figure 2: Toolbox icon on the Standard Toolbar
Either way, you will bring up the Formatting Palette tab of the Toolbox (see Figure 3). Select the Document Theme pane -- here you find options to apply Theme Colors and Theme Fonts (highlighted in red in Figure 3).

Figure 3: Colors and Fonts options can be found within the Document Theme pane
Click on the Colors drop-down list to reveal the Theme Colors gallery that you can see in Figure 4.

Figure 4: Theme Colors gallery
The Theme Colors gallery has several Color sets available -- to see even more sets click the down-arrow (highlighted in red in Figure 4 above). Once you find the Theme Color set that you want to use, click on it to apply the Theme Colors to the open presentation. In PowerPoint 2008 for Mac you can only apply a Theme Color set to all slides in a presentation -- you can't apply a Theme Color set to just selected slides within the presentation.

Tip: Changing Theme Colors on a set of text slides won't show too much of a difference -- this works best when you have slides with plenty of shapes, charts, SmartArt, etc.

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Applying Theme Fonts

A Theme Font set comprises two fonts:

The first font is used for the slide titles and headings.
The second font is for everything else.

Some built-in Theme Font sets use the same font family for both purposes -- and that's perfectly fine!

Follow these steps to apply new Theme Fonts set to your presentation:

Open or create a new presentation in PowerPoint 2008.
Choose View | Formatting Palette (refer to Figure 1 above) or click on the Toolbox icon in the Standard Toolbar (refer to Figure 2 above). This will show the Formatting Palette tab of the Toolbox that includes the option to change Theme Font (refer to Figure 3 above).
Here click the Fonts dropdown list -- this will open the Theme Fonts gallery that you can see in Figure 5. Note that the Theme Font set which is highlighted is the one presently applied to the open presentation.

Figure 5: Theme Fonts gallery
Locate the Theme Font that you want to use -- to see more Theme Fonts click on the down-arrow in the gallery (highlighted in red in Figure 5 above).
Click on the Theme Font that you want to apply to the open presentation. Save the presentation when you are done. PowerPoint 2008 applies the Theme Fonts set to the entire presentation -- you can't apply a Theme Fonts set to just selected slides within the presentation.