(Originally published on July 19, 2023 by Jess Kwok)
Hi, Microsoft 365 Insiders! My name is Jess Kwok and I'm a Product Manager on the PowerPoint team. I've been working closely with our partners on the Word, Excel, and Outlook teams to bring you a new Office theme that will be used across Microsoft 365. Read on to learn more.
Office has a new default theme
We’ve refreshed the Office theme with a new default font, color palette, style, and line weights that help you make your documents more modern and accessible.
Default font-Aptos
We released 5 Calibri replacement candidate fonts to see what you thought:
- Bierstadt
- Grandview
- Seaford
- Skeena
- Tenorite
You chose Bierstadt as the preferred font, and we gave it a new name, Aptos. It supports a variety of weights and includes variants such as narrow, serif, and monospace.
Color palette
We also researched popular color palettes and design trends and created a set of default colors that works well in all Office apps. It helps you easily create accessible content. You can use these new colors to style content such as charts, lists, and shapes.
Default outline weights
We have increased the default outline weights, improved the consistency between shapes and lines, and added better contrast.
Default Styles - Word
We are refreshing the default style of our Word documents and Outlook emails to make them easy to read, look more professional, and easy to navigate.
How it works
As the theme rolls out, all new documents, presentations, worksheets, and emails you create in Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook will use the new theme. You don't have to do anything!
NOTE: Your existing documents won’t change. They will continue to use the original theme that was applied when they were created.
Tips and tricks
- Love Calibri? You can still use the previous Office theme. It’s been renamed Office Theme 2013 – 2022.
- If neither Aptos nor Calibri are the right fonts for you, there are hundreds of other great choices built into Microsoft 365. Choose a typeface that matches your needs and set it as your default. Learn how.
- Want to revert to older style formatting? You can use Word 2013 formatting from the Document Formatting.
Availability
This feature is available to Beta Channel users who are running:
- Win32: Version 2307 (Build 16626.20076) or later
- Mac: Version 16.75 (Build 23071400) or later
- Android: Version 16.0.16626.20076 or later
(Coming later to iOS)
Features are released over some time to ensure things are working smoothly. We highlight features that you may not have because they’re slowly releasing to larger numbers of Insiders. Sometimes we remove elements to further improve them based on your feedback. Although this is rare, we also reserve the option to pull a feature entirely out of the product, even if you, as a Microsoft 365 Insider, have had the opportunity to try it.
Feedback
We love hearing your feedback! Here's how to reach us:
- On our web apps, click the Give Feedback to Microsoft button and include #OfficeTheme in your feedback.
- On our desktop apps, send feedback from the app by selecting File > Feedback on Windows or Help > Feedback on Mac.
- For Android, please tap Settings > Send Feedback to submit your thoughts about this feature. Choose I like something, I don’t like something, or I have an idea.
We look forward to hearing from you!
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