Datasheet
Using Document Themes
Over the years, I’ve seen hundreds of Excel workbooks that were created by others. A sig-
nificant percentage of these workbooks have one thing in common: They are ugly!
In an effort to help users create more professional-looking documents, the Office 2007
designers incorporated the concept of Office document themes. Using themes is an easy (and
almost foolproof) way to specify the colors and fonts and a variety of graphical effects in a
document. Best of all, changing the entire look of your document is a breeze. A few mouse
clicks is all it takes to apply a different theme and change the look of your workbook.
Importantly, the concept of themes is incorporated into other Office 2007 applications.
Therefore, a company can now easily create a standard look for all its documents.
Elements within Excel that are controlled by themes are:
•
Cells and ranges that use theme colors (as opposed to standard colors)
•
Tables
•
Charts
•
Pivot tables
•
Shapes
•
SmartArt
•
WordArt
•
Sheet tab colors (see Tip 14)
Figure 13-1 shows a worksheet that contains a SmartArt diagram, a table, a chart, and a
range formatted using the Heading 1 named style. These items all use the default format-
ting, which is known as Office Theme.
Figure 13-1: The elements in this worksheet use default formatting.
Tip 13: Using Document Themes
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