Applying Workbook Themes and Table Styles

The 2007 Microsoft Office system includes powerful new design tools that enable you to create attractive, professional documents quickly. The Excel 2007 product team implemented the new design capabilities by defining workbook themes and table styles. A theme is a way to specify the fonts, colors, and graphic effects that appear in a workbook. Excel 2007 comes with many themes installed.

To apply an existing workbook theme, display the Page Layout tab of the user interface. Then, in the Themes group, click Themes and then click the theme you want to apply to your workbook. By default, Excel 2007 applies the Office theme to your workbooks.

The theme colors appear in the top segment of the color palettethe standard colors and the More Colors link, which displays the Colors dialog box, appear at the bottom of the palette. If you format workbook elements using colors from the theme colors portion of the color palette, applying a different theme changes that object's colors.

You can change a theme's colors, fonts, and graphic effects by displaying the Page Layout tab on the user interface and then, in the Themes group, selecting new values by using the Colors, Fonts, and Effects buttons' drop-down lists. To save your changes as a new theme, display the Page Layout tab of the user interface, and then, in the Themes group, click Themes and then click Save Current Theme. Use the controls in the dialog box that appears to record your theme for later use. Later, when you click the Themes button, your custom theme will appear at the top of the gallery.

Note

When you save a theme, you save it as an Office Theme file. You can apply the theme to Microsoft Office Word 2007 and Microsoft Office PowerPoint® 2007 files as well.

Just as you can define themes and apply them to entire workbooks, you can apply and define table styles. You select a table's initial style when you create it; to create a new table style, display the Home tab of the user interface and then, in the Styles group, click Format as Table. In the Format as Table gallery, click New Table Style to display the New Table Quick Style dialog box.

Type a name for the new style, select the first table element you want to format, and then click Format to display the Format Cells dialog box. Define the element's formatting and then click OK. When the New Table Quick Style dialog box reappears, its Preview pane displays the overall table style and the Element Formatting section displays the selected element's appearance. Also, in the Table Element list, Excel 2007 displays the element's name in bold to indicate it has been changed.

If you want to make your new style the default for any new tables created in the current workbook, select the Set as default table quick style for this document check box. When you click OK, Excel 2007 saves your custom table style.

See Also

For more information on creating Excel 2007 tables, see "Defining a Table" in Chapter 3.

In this exercise, you will create a new workbook theme, change a workbook's theme, create a new table style, and apply the new style to a table.

USE the HourlyTracking workbook in the practice file folder for this topic. This practice file is located in the My Documents\Microsoft Press\Excel SBS\Appearance folder.

OPEN the HourlyTracking workbook.

1.	If necessary, click any cell in the table.
2.	On the Home tab of the ribbon, in the Styles group, click Format as Table and then click the style at the upper-left corner of the Table Styles gallery. Excel 2007 applies the style to the table.
3.	On the Home tab of the user interface, in the Styles group, click Format as Table and then click New Table Style. The New Table Quick Style dialog box appears.
4.	In the Name field, type Exception Default.
5.	In the Table Element list, click Header Row.
6.	Click Format. The Format Cells dialog box appears.
7.	Click the Fill tab. The Fill tab appears.
8.	In the first row of color squares, just below the No Color button, click the third square from the left. The new background color appears in the Sample pane of the dialog box.
9.	Click OK. The Format Cells dialog box disappears. When the New Table Quick Style dialog box reappears, the Header Row table element appears in bold, and the Preview pane's header row is shaded.
10.	In the Table Element list, click Second Row Stripe and then click Format. The Format Cells dialog box appears.
11.	Click the No Color button and click the third square from the left again. The new background color appears in the Sample pane of the dialog box.
12.	Click OK. The Format Cells dialog box disappears. When the New Table Quick Style dialog box reappears, the Second Row Stripe table element appears in bold, and every second row is shaded in the Preview pane.
13.	Click OK. The New Table Quick Style dialog box disappears.
14.	On the Home tab, in the Styles group, click Format as Table. In the gallery that appears, in the Custom section, click the new format. Excel 2007 applies the new format.
15.	On the Page Layout tab, in the Themes group, click the Fonts control down arrow and then click Verdana. Excel 2007 changes the theme's font to Verdana.
16.	In the Themes group, click the Themes button and then click Save Current Theme. The Save Current Theme dialog box appears.
17.	In the File name field, type Verdana Office and then click Save. Excel 2007 saves your theme.
18.	In the Themes group, click the Themes button and then click Origin. Excel 2007 applies the new theme to your workbook.

CLOSE the HourlyTracking workbook.