Why Did My Microsoft Word Theme Turn Black On Mac

Word templates also host a massive selection of paired resumes and cover letters, which were professionally created to help you score that perfect job. Microsoft Word templates are ready to use if you’re short on time and just need a fillable outline for a flyer, calendar, or brochure. Start quickly with the most recent versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote and OneDrive —combining the familiarity of Office and the unique Mac features you love. Work online or offline, on your own or with others in real time—whatever works for what you’re doing. How to Change Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint) Theme on Mac. This change can be invoked from any of the Microsoft Office apps, and the theme change applies to all other Microsoft Office apps too. In other words, if you change the theme in Microsoft Word, it will impact the theme in Microsoft Excel as well, and vice versa.

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Understanding Theme Colors

Understanding Theme Colors

When you use a formatting feature that involves a color palette, such as when you change the fill color of an object, the colors that appear depend on the colors that are currently loaded into the theme placeholders. Check out the palette in Figure 3, for example. This palette shows 10 theme colors, with lighter and darker tints/shades of the colors beneath. If you choose one of these theme colors for an object you are formatting, and then you change to a different theme, the color will change as prescribed by the new theme. In contrast, if you apply one of the colors in the Standard Colors section of the palette, that color is forever fixed until you manually change it, regardless of the theme. (The same goes if you choose More Colors and select from a dialog box; all those custom colors are fixed too.)

Figure 3: The colors for the currently selected theme appear on color palettes in Office applications.

A theme has 12 color placeholders, named for their functions: Text/Background Light 1 and Dark 1, Text/Background Light 2 and Dark 2, Accent 1 through Accent 6, Hyperlink, and Followed Hyperlink. (Remember the XML code for the colors back in Figure 1?) You might not always see all 12 of them, depending on which palette you are looking at. In Figure 3, for example, you only see 10. The two missing are the colors for followed and unfollowed hyperlinks. In other areas of some applications you might only see 8 of the placeholders, because sometimes Text/Background Dark 1 and Text/Background Light 1 are omitted. (That’s because they are almost always black and white, respectively.)

You can apply different theme colors separately from applying the theme itself. That’s handy because you can pick a theme that has the fonts and effects you want, and then customize it with the colors from some other theme. (You can change the fonts and effects separately from the main theme too, as you’ll learn later in this article.) To choose different theme colors, do one of the following:

  • In Word: On the Design tab, click Colors, and then choose a different set of colors. The colors you see on the menu that appears only show 8 of the theme’s colors, as you can see in Figure 4.
  • Figure 4: Choose different theme colors in Word from the Design tab.

  • In Excel: On the Page Layout tab, click Colors, and then choose a different set of colors.
  • In PowerPoint: On the Design tab, click the More button (the down arrow with the horizontal line over it) in the Variants group, and then on the menu that appears, point to Colors to open a submenu and choose the desired set of colors.

Here’s the non-intuitive thing about choosing the colors separately, though: the names of the color sets don’t match up with the names of the themes. So, for example, if you really like the colors in the Ion theme, you can’t get them by looking for Ion on the Colors menu. So, if you want to make sure you get the colors from a certain theme, you are better off starting with that theme and then customizing the Fonts and Effects manually as desired. It’s much easier to duplicate the fonts and effects from another theme than it is to duplicate its colors.

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TechNote 74

Applicability

The information on this page applies to:
  • MathType for Windows and Mac
  • Equation Editor (e.g., Microsoft Equation 3) for Windows and Mac
All supported versions of Word for Windows and Mac

Issue

Many users become concerned when their equations are replaced with empty boxes or appear in gray-shaded boxes. Double-clicking these boxes will launch MathType and display the equation, and the equations will print correctly, but the equations are not displayed properly in Microsoft Word.

Reason

The 'empty boxes' behavior is a feature in Microsoft Word called 'Picture (or Image) Placeholders' designed to conserve RAM. The Picture Placeholders option helps minimize the amount of computer resources required to display a page and helps Word scroll multiple pages faster on-screen. So long as your computer does not have insufficient RAM, you can toggle this setting so the equations in your document display on-screen.

The 'gray-shading' behavior is a setting called 'Field Shading' designed to make finding equations and other OLE objects easier when they can be difficult to see among surrounding content.

Solution

As these are features of Word, it is advisable to refer to Word's Help files to learn more about them and how they are activated.

If none of the equations or other graphics in your document display (Windows only)

If you find that all of the graphics in your document are not being displayed, Picture (or Image) Placeholders is probably enabled. To turn this option off, do the following:

  1. Select
    • Office button | Word Options | Advanced |Show document content (Word 2007)
    • File tab | Options | Advanced | Show document content (Word 2010 and later)
  2. Uncheck the box for Image Placeholders or Picture Placeholders.

If this was the cause, unchecking this option will cause all the objects in the document to be displayed again.

If some or all of the equations or other graphics in your document display in a gray-shaded box

If you find that some or all of the graphics in your document display in gray (or striped) boxes, Field Shading is probably enabled. To turn this option off, do the following:

  1. Select
    • File tab | Options | Advanced | Show document content (Word 2010 and later)
  2. Under Field Shading, select Never from the pull-down menu.

If this was the cause, setting this option to Never will cause all the objects in the document to be displayed properly again.

Why Did My Microsoft Word Theme Turn Black On Mac Desktop


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We hope this has been helpful. As always, please let us know if you have questions about this, or if you have additional techniques that work. We'd love to hear from you.