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

Question

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?

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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! :-)

Answer 4

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.

Answer 5

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.

Answer 6

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