The Open XML Theme Builder helps you create great new themes for Office 2007 documents. It’s a pretty cool little tool, you’d probably like to see a picture of it right about now. OK.
Main UI: Open XML Theme Builder
Here’s a short message from Jason Schneekloth, Microsoft program manager for the Theme Builder:
The Open XML Theme Builder tool provides a simplified user interface for creating custom themes which can be used to define the look and feel of documents created within Microsoft® Office PowerPoint® 2007, Microsoft® Office Excel® 2007, and Microsoft® Office Word 2007. The tool gives users the ability to quickly and easily design the look of a document without having to understand the inner workings of XML.
This is the latest rendition of the program we used to create the great themes that shipped with Office 2007. The tool lets you open a theme, adjust it’s elements, test it, and save it out.
For example, here’s the Urban theme loaded in the tool. Notice how the color elements are arrayed so you can see how, independent of the presentation design, the colors work together or where there may be problems.
Colors and Fills tab with the Urban theme loaded
After you’ve worked through the color and font choices the tool can launch PowerPoint for an in-place check of your efforts. Again, the urban theme checked out in PPT.
Checking the theme in PowerPoint
The theme is loaded into PowerPoint and applied to a sample document that contains slides of color swatches and layout samples. This gives the new scheme a real world shakedown. You can pop back and forth between the tool and PowerPoint, checking your changes and their effects as much as you like. It’s really very cool.
Important note: Because changes are saved directly back on the theme you opened, you should make a point of working on copies of your installed themes. We suggest you copy your Office themes files to a new folder on your desktop or in your documents folder.
OK, so gimmie
So you may be asking yourself, “Where do I get this marvelous tool?” Glad you asked. It’s available on CodePlex.
“What’s CodePlex?” Boy, you’re full of questions. CodePlex is Microsoft’s open source project hosting site. Yes, this is an open source project. The Theme builder project is at http://www.codeplex.com/openxmlthemebuilder
Yes, there’s plenty more we could write about how the CodePlex community helps projects advance and grow, and how exciting it is to use this as a home for the Theme Builder, but you get the idea. We invite you to read up on CodePlex and the Theme Builder site at the links above. We’re trying to keep this short.
R.T.F.M… um… well…
More important for most of our readers will be the question of how to actually use the Theme Builder. Especially since there’s no documentation in the release yet. It’s not impossible to figure out by exploring the UI, but you could probably do with a bit of help before you get in too deep. Luckily, the PowerPoint MVPs have had access to this tool for a bit, helping with feedback and debugging, and several are working on training and instructions already.
MVP Echo Swinford is adding Theme Builder instructions to her site at Echo’s Voice. Specifically http://www.echosvoice.com/2007_tutorials.htm. She has a “adding custom colors to the color picker” tutorial, and will soon add one on including two color schemes in the theme. She plans to expand this to include more theme builder-specific training.
We caught MVP Geetesh Bajaj a little off guard with our timing, he’s currently on vacation and can’t open up his articles on learning themes just yet. Hopefully these will be available shortly after the 23rd, nifty timing that. Geetesh publishes his writing and a lot of lovely design templates at Indezine.com. Tentatively the link will be http://www.indezine.com/products/powerpoint/learn/themes/ (You’ll get a password prompt until he opens the document up for reading.) But check out Indezine while you’re at it, there’s plenty of great PowerPoint reading there right now.
Finally, there will be links to all of this in later PPT Blog posts, as well as at another MVP maintained site, Steve Rindsberg’s PPT FAQ. Steve will modestly protest that he only collects the work of others for the site, but the fact that he’s put together one of the most comprehensive PowerPoint answers sites around is no modest achievement. Steve will link PPT FAQ to additional instructions as they become available.
So, there you have it. An early holiday present. As you might expect, the PowerPoint team is really heads down building the next version right now, but we’re interested in what you have to say about this and other topics. So do write!
Talk to you again soon,
Richard Bretschneider
Senior PowerPoint Program Manager
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