Themes in Excel

Themes For Excel

I don’t know whether you have noticed or not we all have worked with the default office theme for many years with Microsoft Office Products. In excel, word, or PowerPoint probably we have not tried any other theme except Office default theme. If it is a chart, excel table, slicer, pivot tables, in fact, shapes, etc… all work with default themes unless we change the default theme in excel. In this article, I will discuss the different themes in excel.

Have you seen this kind of fonts in any of the excel files?

In the above image, both column header & row headers are showing a different font style. You must be wondering how did they change from your regular font of Calibri like the below one.

Where are the Themes in Excel?

Yes, we have much more than what we see in excel. We just need to explore all these options to make the sheet look beautiful and eye-catching. In this article, we will explore each one of the different themes in excel.

Now the first question would be is where are these themes hidden in excel? The truth is that it is not hidden in excel rather it is visible just in front of us but we haven’t recognized it for long.

Themes are available under Page Layout in excel. Under themes, we have Themes, different colors, Fonts, Effects.

In excel 2013 we have as many as 31 inbuilt themes available, 23 different colors, 15 different inbuilt Effects.

Examples of Using Themes in Excel

Below are examples of using Excel Themes.

Example #1 – Change Default Theme

Now we will see the practical example of themes. I have created a basic default chart of sales of many years & one of the shapes.

This is the themes of the default theme of Office. In order to change the theme of these two i.e. chart & shape go to Page Layout and in above available themes, it will preview you the result before clicking on it.

In the above image, I have selected the theme type called Facet. Like this, you can select any of the above themes and take look at the preview and finalize your theme.

Example #2 – Change the Row Header & Column Header View

You must have familiar with the default row header and column header which is given by Microsoft like the below one.

Step 1: Go to Page Layout and select Fonts.

Step 2: Click on the drop down and select Customize Fonts.

Step 3: Now you will see below the new dialogue box.

Step 4: Change the Heading Font to Harlow Solid Italic and change the Body Font to Footlight MT Light. Now on the right-hand side, you see the preview.

Step 5: You can name this font theme.

Now, look how row and column headers fonts have changed.

It is slightly different than the default theme.

Example #3 – Create Your Own Theme Under Custom Theme in Excel

If you are not satisfied with the available wide variety of themes from Microsoft you can create your own theme and apply to make the difference.

Usually, the theme is the makeup of three elements one is colors, fonts, and effects. In order to design your own theme follow the below steps.

Step 1: Go to Page Layout and select Colors.

Step 2: Click on colors drop-down list and select Customize Colors.

Step 3: Apply below colors (you can give your own colors) and name your theme and click on Save.

Step 4: Now click on Fonts and select Customize Fonts.

Step 5: Select the fonts as per your wish.

Step 6: Click on Effects and select any one of the existing effects. We cannot customize this, we have select any one of the existing effects.

Now we have created all theme options.

Step 7: Click on theme drop down and select Save Current Theme.

Step 8: Now we will see a different save window. Give them a name and select the Save type as .thmx

Now we have created our own theme. When the excel workbook opens up we can see this theme under Page Layout > Theme > Custom.

Things to Remember

• If you share the file which has a custom theme to your colleague theme will not be available for them but theme color and font styles will be applicable.
• The theme is applicable for excel chart, tables, shapes, slicers, pivot tables.
• Use very light colors in your custom themes.

Recommended Articles

This has been a guide to Themes in Excel. Here we discuss how to apply different themes in excel with examples and downloadable excel template. You may learn more about excel from the following articles –

• Create Organization Chart in Excel
• Create Flow Chart in Excel
• How to Print in Excel?
• How to Track Changes in Excel?