Changing themes in Normal template

[Ken Welsby]

I know this has been asked before; I have read several Q&As but still
confused.

I'm even more confused when I come across references to "doing it in
PowerPoint" .

I thought maybe all this is just a reflection of my advancing years... Until
I mentioned it last night to someone 20 years younger who is very much a
"power user" and has a dozen Mac users in her firm.

"That really irritates me," she said. "My solution has been half a dozen
specific document masters which sit as icons on people's desktops. But it's
quite difficult to train people NEVER to click on New, but ALWAYS to open
one of the icons.

"Let me know when you find the answer - because then I can make Normal look
like something from our organisation and not a spotty kid's back bedroom".

Let me make it simple. I want to do the following for my Normal template so
that I can then install it on two other machines so that all docs maintain
the corporate style with miniumum effort.

1- Replace theme fonts Cambria and Calibri with my own default fonts (Gill
Sans and Palatino, both from purchased OT libraries, not out of the box,
already installed using Font Explorer)

2- Have C&C disappear from the top section of the font menu so they cannot
be selected by accident; I'm hoping that Gill & Pal will replace them.

3- Replace the theme colours with a palette of my own choosing - two main
house colours and 3-4 others for specific purposes, eg captions for imported
graphics and charts. Again trying to standardise.

I understand the rationale of themes (even if they seem wildly off-target -
to put it politely - for Office users who are probably in business) so do
NOT need any philosophy.

If the answer would bore forum-ites or involve opinions on my sanity which
contravene the "spirit of openness and civility" feel free to email me
privately. I just want to get on with some work.

TIA from the misty banks of the River Thames.

Ken

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Ken:

Let me make this very simple... "Don't try this in Mac Word for now. Wait
for the next version."

The implementation of Themes is incomplete in Word 2008. You can do this in
Word 2007 on the PC, but Mac Word 2008 is not perfectly reliable working
with the result, and the PC has the ability to create artefacts that Mac
Word can't handle yet.

And there is a nasty bug that turns most text baby-poo yellow in Word 2003
if you apply themes in Word 2008.

In Word 2007, you can achieve your requirements 1 and 3. (You can't remove
the default theme palettes, but you can add your own to them.)

Themes have no say in what appears on the Font menu. If you don't want the
font to appear, remove all instances of it from the user's machine. Be
careful with OT fonts: some work, some don't -- test carefully. And be
aware that if you remove Calibri and Cambria, PC documents are all going to
reformat when they arrive.

I strongly advocate training users not to USE the Font menu: define the
required fonts into styles and train the users to use those.

In PC Word solutions, I remove the font menu, having seen far too many
analogues of the Spotty Teenager's Bedroom.

For now, in Mac Word, separate templates are the way to go (and will
continue to work in Word Next).

If you have a very high tolerance for pain, you can hack the XML directly.
But you are still limited in what works and what doesn't in Word 2008. My
advice is to leave Themes to the home users for now. Mac Word Next should
have the full Developer environment that will enable us to get themes
working properly.

Thanks for the query, hope this helps...

I know this has been asked before; I have read several Q&As but still
confused.

I'm even more confused when I come across references to "doing it in
PowerPoint" .

I thought maybe all this is just a reflection of my advancing years... Until
I mentioned it last night to someone 20 years younger who is very much a
"power user" and has a dozen Mac users in her firm.

"That really irritates me," she said. "My solution has been half a dozen
specific document masters which sit as icons on people's desktops. But it's
quite difficult to train people NEVER to click on New, but ALWAYS to open
one of the icons.

"Let me know when you find the answer - because then I can make Normal look
like something from our organisation and not a spotty kid's back bedroom".

Let me make it simple. I want to do the following for my Normal template so
that I can then install it on two other machines so that all docs maintain
the corporate style with miniumum effort.

1- Replace theme fonts Cambria and Calibri with my own default fonts (Gill
Sans and Palatino, both from purchased OT libraries, not out of the box,
already installed using Font Explorer)

2- Have C&C disappear from the top section of the font menu so they cannot
be selected by accident; I'm hoping that Gill & Pal will replace them.

3- Replace the theme colours with a palette of my own choosing - two main
house colours and 3-4 others for specific purposes, eg captions for imported
graphics and charts. Again trying to standardise.

I understand the rationale of themes (even if they seem wildly off-target -
to put it politely - for Office users who are probably in business) so do
NOT need any philosophy.

If the answer would bore forum-ites or involve opinions on my sanity which
contravene the "spirit of openness and civility" feel free to email me
privately. I just want to get on with some work.

TIA from the misty banks of the River Thames.

Ken

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[Bearded]

Thanks, John

As always, straight to the point.

The obvious route for now is to follow my friend's strategy of creating
several different templates for different types of doc, rather than, as
at present, have all my various styles loaded into Normal.

The reason I went that route in the first place is that in work for my
biggest client, content is often re-purposed and then re-edited, say
from briefing and strategy papers into business proposals. But after a
couple of hours of fiddling about it will be all straightforward.

Thanks much

Ken

 

[John McGhie]

Yeah, that's what I thought you were doing.

I tried that for a client in Word 2007 and they hated it. Themes only
changes the colours of things.

What you really need is XSLT Transforms, which you can do in Word 2007 (and,
I hope, in Word 2010...) but not in Word 2008.

For those that don't work with them, XSLTs are advanced XML style sheets
that work like Cascading Style Sheets but enable you to selectively include,
discard, move, or re-purpose content. You can add or remove, or re-purpose
stuff. Perfect for re-purposing.

Cheers

Thanks, John

As always, straight to the point.

The obvious route for now is to follow my friend's strategy of creating
several different templates for different types of doc, rather than, as
at present, have all my various styles loaded into Normal.

The reason I went that route in the first place is that in work for my
biggest client, content is often re-purposed and then re-edited, say
from briefing and strategy papers into business proposals. But after a
couple of hours of fiddling about it will be all straightforward.

Thanks much

Ken

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]