Applying Themes in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2011 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

Applying a Theme to All Slides in a Presentation

You have already seen how to apply Themes in different applications of Office 2008 for Mac. Now let us see how to repeat the same process in Office 2011. Here also you will find plenty of built-in Themes which you can choose from. These Themes can be found under Themes tab of the Ribbon, shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Office Themes

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

1. Open an existing presentation, or create a new one in PowerPoint 2011.
2. Now access the Themes tab of the Ribbon. As you can see in Figure 1, there are thumbnail previews of several Themes available within the Themes gallery. To view the drop-down Themes gallery, hover the cursor over the Theme thumbnail previews and you'll be able to see a down-arrow button (highlighted in red in Figure 2). Click on this button and the Themes gallery appears in drop-down mode (refer again to Figure 2).
3. 
   Figure 2: Themes gallery in drop-down mode
3. In this gallery, the Theme that the existing presentation is based upon is visible under the top section named This Presentation (refer to Figure 2 above). You can also see a collection of many other built-in Themes. To view more previews, use the scroll bar on the right side of the gallery. Once you find the Theme that you want to apply, just click on its thumbnail and the Theme gets applied to the entire presentation.

Applying a Theme to Selected Slides in a Presentation

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 2011.
2. Select the slides in Slide Sorter view (or in the Slides Pane on the left side of the interface) that you want to apply a new Theme to.
3. With these slides selected, access the Themes tab of the Ribbon. Choose any Theme within the Themes gallery and right click on its thumbnail. In the context menu that appears, click on Apply to Selected Slides option, as shown in Figure 3.
4. 
   Figure 3: Apply Selected Slides option
4. This will apply the selected Theme only to the selected slides as shown in Figure 4. Instead of bringing up the context menu you can also simply click on the thumbnail to apply that Theme to all of the selected slides.
5. 
   Figure 4: Theme applied to the 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 workbook in 2011 for Mac:

1. Open an existing Word document or Excel spreadsheet, or create a new one.
2. Access the Home tab of the Ribbon, and locate the Themes group on the extreme right, as shown in Figure 5.
3. 
   Figure 5: Themes group in Excel 2011
4. The Themes group looks a little different for Word 2011, as shown in Figure 6.
5. 
   Figure 6: Themes group in Word 2011
3. Now click on the Themes icon (highlighted in red in Figure 5 above for Excel) to reveal the drop-down Themes gallery, as shown in Figure 7.
4. 
   Figure 7: Themes gallery in drop-down mode
4. As you can see above in Figure 7, 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. If you want to view more Themes, use up and down arrows within the bottom area of the scrollbar (highlighted in red in Figure 7 above).