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Saving Themes In PowerPoint, Word, and Excel 2007

Learn how to save a Theme from within PowerPoint, Excel, and Word versions of Office 2007.

Author: Geetesh Bajaj

Product/Version: Microsoft PowerPoint 2007
OS: Microsoft Windows XP / Vista

Date Created: June 16th 2008
Last Updated: December 17th 2010

Why Save a Theme?
How to Save Themes
Saving the Theme file in Microsoft Word and Excel

Why Save a Theme?

PowerPoint 2007 (also Word and Excel) use a variety of built-in themes that are installed by default -- in PowerPoint, you can find these in the Design tab of the Ribbon, as shown in Figure 1.


Figure 1: Themes

It's a good idea to learn how you can save individual theme files for several reasons:

• Customizing: You might want to customize the theme in PowerPoint 2007 by changing the Theme Colors, Theme Fonts, etc -- or you may want to add new Slide Layouts. By the time you are done customizing any theme, it may no longer look like its original state! That's one good reason to save your theme file before you play with it.
• Sharing: Or you may have customized the theme file to perfection -- and it's so nice now that you want to save it as a file that you can share with others.
• Backup: You can just save your favorite theme as a backup -- so that it is safe.
• Use it within Theme Builder: You might want to open a THMX file in Theme Builder to edit and fine-tune it to your requirements.

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How to Save Themes

Follow these steps to save an active theme as a THMX file:

1. Open or create a presentation in PowerPoint 2007. Even a single slide blank slide will work -- just make sure you apply the theme that you want to save
   
   
2. Now access the Design tab of the Ribbon, and click the downward pointing arrow next to the Themes gallery to view it as a dropdown gallery, as shown in Figure 2.
   
   
   Figure 2: Themes gallery in dropdown mode
   
   
3. Now choose the Save Current Theme option, as shown in Figure 3.
   
   
   Figure 3: Save Current Theme
   
   
4. This opens the Save Current Theme dialog box (see Figure 4) -- here you can provide the new name, and choose a destination folder to save the theme (.THMX) file.
   
   
   Figure 4: Save Current Theme
   
   
5. Click the Save button and you're done.

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Saving the Theme file in Microsoft Word and Excel

Themes can be saved from within Microsoft Word and Excel (versions 2007) in the same way it is done in PowerPoint -- in both of these programs, the themes are found in a tab location different than PowerPoint. Follow the steps to save the current theme in Microsoft Word or Excel:

1. Open (or create) a Word document or Excel spreadsheet/worksheet.
   
   
2. Now access the Page Layout tab of the Ribbon, and click the Themes button as shown in Figure 5 to reveal the Themes gallery. Click on the theme you want to save -- this applies the theme to the open file.
   
   
   Figure 5: Themes Gallery
   
   
3. Now click the Save Current Theme option as shown in Figure 5 above. This will open the Save Current Theme dialog box (refer to Figure 4 above) -- provide a name and location to save the new Theme (.THMX) file.

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Next Topic: Theme Builder