Chapter 5: Formatting Worksheets
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Understanding Document Themes
In an attempt to help users create more professional-looking documents, the Office design-
ers incorporated a feature known as document themes. Using themes is an easy (and almost
foolproof) way to specify the colors, fonts, and a variety of graphic effects in a document.
Best of all, changing the entire look of your document is a breeze. A few mouse clicks is all
that it takes to apply a different theme and change the look of your workbook.Importantly, the concept of themes is incorporated into other Office applications. Therefore,
a company can easily create a standard and consistent look for all of its documents.Themes don’t override specific formatting that you apply. For example, assume that you apply the Accent1 named
style to a range. Then you change the font color for a few cells in that range. If you change to a different theme, the
manually applied font colors won’t be modified to use the new theme font colors. Bottom line: If you plan to take
advantage of themes, stick with the default formatting choices.
Figure 5.23 shows a worksheet that contains a SmartArt diagram, a table, a chart, a range
formatted with the Title named style, and a range formatted with the Explanatory Text
named style. These items all use the default theme, which is the Office theme.FIGURE 5.23
The elements in this worksheet use the default theme.