Themes
Before you leave the overall topic of formatting Word documents, you should consider one last formatting “quick change” you can make in a document—changing its theme.
What are themes?
In Word 2007, the applied theme determines the overall color, font, and style choices for items in a document such as tables, shapes, and SmartArt. Changing the theme updates the colors for these items and others in the document, so that the document maintains a consistent overall look. The theme even works with the styles supplied by the document template; changing the theme updates the fonts for the styles.
Each overall Theme encompasses three different elements:
Theme colors. Controls the colors used in tables, graphic objects, and some other documents elements like headers and footers.
Theme fonts. Controls the heading and body fonts used in the document.
Theme effects. Controls whether certain document elements use effects like glows or shadows.
Using built-in themes
The themes appear in a gallery, and when Live Preview is enabled, you can “try on” themes for the document before applying the one you want. To change the theme. click the Page Layout tab on the Ribbon, and then click the Themes button in the Themes group. Move the mouse pointer over various themes to preview the look each applies (Figure 8-21), and then click the theme to apply.
Notice that there are three additional buttons in the Themes group. These are the Theme Colors, Theme Fonts, and Theme Effects buttons, respectively, and you can use them to change overall factors of the document’s appearance without changing the whole theme. You can save any combination of Theme Colors, Theme Fonts, and Theme Effects settings as a new overall document theme; to start the process, click the Themes button and then click the Save Current Theme choice at the bottom of the gallery that appears.