More Themes on Microsoft Office com

Customizing themes

You can create many different custom themes by starting with the core built-in themes. The customization for theme colors, theme fonts, and theme effects is next to the Themes gallery. Choose a theme, change its settings or define your own, and then save the settings as a new theme in your gallery.

For even more new colors, fonts, and effects, do one of the following to download new themes from Microsoft Office.com:

• 
  On the Design tab, in the Themes group, click the More button , and then click More Themes on Microsoft Office.com.
  

For step-by-step information about changing or customizing theme colors or fonts, see the article Customize a theme in PowerPoint 2010.

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What can I do with theme colors?

Modifying theme colors (theme colors: A set of colors that is used in a file. Theme colors, theme fonts, and theme effects compose a theme.) is the most dramatic change you can make to your presentation, with the exception of changing the theme. With one click, you can change the tone of a presentation from casual to formal, or vice versa, by changing the theme colors.

Theme colors have 12 color slots. The first four horizontal colors are for text and backgrounds. Text that is created with the light colors will always be legible over the dark colors, and text that is created with dark colors will always be legible over the light colors. The next six are accent colors that are always visible over the four potential background colors. The last two colors, not shown in the picture below, are reserved for hyperlinks (hyperlink: A word, phrase, picture, icon, symbol or other element in a computer document or webpage on which a user may click to move to another part of the document or webpage or to open another document, webpage, or file.) and followed hyperlinks (followed hyperlink: A hyperlink to a destination you have visited. Once you follow a hyperlink to its destination, the hyperlink changes color.).

Theme colors handle both light and dark backgrounds very well. There are visibility rules built into the theme so that you can switch colors at any time and all your content will remain legible and still look good. PowerPoint 2007 uses large text, sometimes lightly colored on a dark background.

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