Adding Custom Colors to the Color Picker

You can add your own custom colors to an Office 2007 theme (.THMX file extension). In the screenshot below, you can see three custom colors -- they show up in their own section on the color picker.

You must modify the theme's XML code in order to add these colors. You must also add them to each theme you want them to be available in. This allows you to make different sets of custom colors available for different themes.

Click here to get a PDF with instructions for creating custom colors. 

Click here for a text file with code you can add to your theme1.xml file.

Click here for a modified THMX file you can deconstruct.

PowerPoint MVP Shyam Pillai has created a color scheme creator add-in that also lets you add custom colors to the interface. It's very handy, and it's even free. Click here to download it from http://skp.mvps.org/swatch.htm. 

Word MVP Tony Jollans has an incredible set of articles about how theme colors are represented in the Word object model. See them at 

http://proofficedev.com:80/blog/2007/08/21/colours-in-word-2007-part-1/

http://proofficedev.com/blog/2007/10/10/colours-in-word-2007-part-2/

and

http://www.wordarticles.com/Articles/Colours/2007.htm

(back to top)