Applying Themes in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2016 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

Basically, Themes are like a style sheet for your Office documents. They define how your text appears, where it appears, and also the layouts of your slides. Themes also influence how charts look within Excel and PowerPoint, and also how your tables appear in all Office programs. You can also change the Theme for an Office document, sheet, or slide and watch how this simple task can change the overall appearance of your content.

Applying a Theme to All Slides in PowerPoint

Applying a Theme to an existing presentation is easy, and you'll find that plenty of Themes are already contained inside Office 2016 for Mac. In PowerPoint 2016 for Mac, these Themes can be found within the Design tab of Ribbon, as you can see in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Office Themes

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

1. Open an existing presentation, or create a new one in PowerPoint 2016 for Mac.
2. Now, access the Design tab of the Ribbon. As you can see in Figure 2, there are thumbnail previews of several Themes available within the Themes gallery. To view the Themes drop-down gallery that contains even more thumbnail previews, click the More button (highlighted in red within Figure 2). This brings up the Themes drop-down gallery, as shown in Figure 2.
3. 
   Figure 2: Themes drop-down gallery
4. Now, select any of the Themes and click on it to apply. If you clicked by mistake, press ⌘+Z to undo the last action.

Applying a Theme to Selected Slides in PowerPoint

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

1. Open an existing presentation, or create a new one in PowerPoint 2016 for Mac.
2. Select slides in Slide Sorter view (or within the Slides Pane on the left side of the interface) that you want to apply a new Theme to. In Figure 3, you can see that we have selected 3 slides within Slides Pane.
3. 
   Figure 3: Three Slides selected within the Slides Pane
3. With these slides selected, access the Design tab of the Ribbon and open the Themes drop-down gallery. Choose any Theme within the Themes drop-down gallery, and right-click (or Ctrl+click) on the thumbnail of the Theme to bring up the context menu that you can see in Figure 3.
4. 
   Figure 4: Context menu within Themes drop-down gallery
4. In this context menu, choose the Apply to Selected Slides option (refer to Figure 4, above). Alternatively, you can simply click on the thumbnail to apply that Theme to all selected slides.
5. This applies the Theme to the slides, selected earlier in the presentation, as you can see within the Slides Pane in Figure 5.
6. 
   Figure 5: Theme applied to 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 spreadsheet in Office 2016:

1. Open an existing Word document or Excel spreadsheet, or create a new one.
2. In Excel, access the Page Layout tab of the Ribbon, and click the Themes button, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 6.
3. 
   Figure 6: Themes button within Excel 2016 for Mac
4. In Word, access the Design tab of the Ribbon, and click the Themes button, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 7.
5. 
   Figure 7: Themes button within Word 2016 for Mac
3. Clicking the Themes button (highlighted in red within Figures 6 for Excel and within Figure 7 for Word) reveals the Themes drop-down gallery, as shown in Figure 8.
4. 
   Figure 8: Themes drop-down gallery in Excel 2016 for Mac
4. As you can see above in Figure 8, 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.