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The 3 color schemes (blue, silver, black) available in Office 2007 provide poor differentiation for active windows. It is really hard to locate the currently active editor (Word) window at a quick glance. Cursor hover response is also poor.

Is there a way to configure Office 2007 to use other color schemes?

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2
  • @#%@%@$#% -- we just got forcibly upgraded at work from Office 2003 to Office 2007. I want something besides blue/silver/black, don't understand why I can't just have the default color scheme selected by Control Panel that applies to all other Windows applications.
    – Jason S
    Commented Aug 5, 2011 at 13:41
  • 3
    That's the way it is ...
    – harrymc
    Commented Aug 6, 2011 at 15:49

6 Answers 6

Reset to default
7

I dont think so.... They may not add any custom themes concept because it exposes the security vulnerabilities.

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  • 2
    There are no other alternate themes for the office 2007/2010 products built-in. Running a websearch, there are no results that actually show how to hack or modify the system to revert to 2003-esque looks or to allow third-party tools like WindowsBlinds. So it appears you are out of luck.
    – music2myear
    Commented Aug 5, 2011 at 14:43
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    As a note, which Color Scheme is used is read from the registry path: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\Theme and this value only takes 1,2 or 3 as accepted input. Given that, I would say the color schemes are build-in and thus no chance of adding anything.
    – Tex Hex
    Commented Aug 8, 2011 at 17:52
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I think I eventually found the "final answer" to "how to differentiate active/inactive windows in Office?" long aged question! :-)

  • Select an "high contrast" theme from standard Windows themes
  • edit it slightly
  • save it to "mytheme"
  • find your custom themes folder (%localappdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Themes)
  • open mytheme.theme into a text editor

  • replace last section "Control Panel\Colors" contents by these:

    [Control Panel\Colors] Scrollbar=250 250 250 Background=150 150 150 ActiveTitle=0 0 185 InactiveTitle=192 192 192 Menu=192 192 192 Window=255 255 255 WindowFrame=5 5 5 MenuText=0 0 0 WindowText=0 0 0 TitleText=255 255 255 ActiveBorder=0 0 0 InactiveBorder=252 252 252 AppWorkspace=55 255 255 Hilight=100 100 255 HilightText=255 255 255 ButtonFace=192 192 192 ButtonShadow=127 127 127 GrayText=192 192 192 ButtonText=0 0 0 InactiveTitleText=0 0 0 ButtonHilight=224 224 224 ButtonDkShadow=0 0 0 ButtonLight=192 192 192 InfoText=0 0 0 InfoWindow=255 255 55 ButtonAlternateFace=192 192 192 HotTrackingColor=100 100 255 GradientActiveTitle=0 0 128 GradientInactiveTitle=128 128 128 MenuHilight=160 160 160 MenuBar=255 255 255

The most important values are:

ActiveTitle=0 0 185

InactiveTitle=192 192 192

  • Save the text file
  • Refresh the themes list by closing/opening theme selector
  • Double click "mytheme"

Enjoy! :-)

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  • Welcome to superuser. We arn't a traditional forum - we expect answers to directly answer questions (and I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt to whether this will work on 2007), and you're always free to edit your answers. I've deleted your older non answers.
    – Journeyman Geek ♦
    Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 10:59
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Which OS are you using? If you got Aero on, you'll have to jack up your Color Intensity and/or turn off transparency, which really screw with the colors.

It's easy in XP to differentiate.

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To answer your question, no, not that I know of. However, a minor workaround: If you revert to windows classic, there is a little more contrast between active and inactive windows as the top part of the window chrome turns a darker shade of gray.

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  • office 2007 ignores that and continues to be the only ugly themed window even if you kill the theme service.
    – gcb
    Commented Nov 12, 2013 at 18:05
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There is another workaround, though the cure may be worse than the problem. You can change the OS theme to a high-contrast theme, then manually choose the colors you want. But as I said, this is system-wide, so it's going to change everything, not just Office.

In XP you'll find it under Control Panel-->Accessibility

In Windows 7 it's under Control Panel-->Appearance and Personalization-->Change the Theme

So it can be done, but not likely to help much.

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  • office 2007 ignore all that and uses its own crappy bloated theme that you can't even tell which window has focus.
    – gcb
    Commented Nov 12, 2013 at 18:05
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no there is no other way to customize this color scheme but you can make it look like office 2003 and your main concern is visibility so I think this'll be appropriate ... check this article over here

http://blogs.pcworld.com/tipsandtweaks/archives/005682.html

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    It would be nice to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link only for future reference.
    – slhck
    Commented Aug 12, 2011 at 10:07
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    The link doesn't work any more. So yes, a bit more detail would have helped. There's not even enough information here to formulate a search.
    – Ian Goldby
    Commented Apr 10, 2012 at 8:27
  • found a cache webcache.googleusercontent.com/… and with that i could find the new url pcworld.com/article/161516 it is NOT about color scheme, but about the menu ribbon, and suggest a plugin that makes it a regular windows menu ubit.ch/software/ubitmenu-languages
    – gcb
    Commented Nov 12, 2013 at 18:09

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