How does one change the Font associated with the Theme? I would rather not use Calibri.
2 Answers
To change the theme fonts for the current document, go to the Design menu and select a new set of fonts from the Fonts dropdown (about 2/3 of the way along the ribbon).
You can save the current theme + any such modifications by clicking "Set as default". However, that does not change the theme itself - if you create another document and select the same theme, the theme properties are the "factory default" ones (i.e. the ones defined by Microsoft).
As for the comment that the headline/body fonts are "the wrong way around," Yes, the available choices in the fonts dropdown seem very limited
ISTR that it has been noticed that the Mac Word choice, i.e. Times for headers and Arial for body text, is the opposite of the Windows Word choice. But I'd have to check that to be sure.
I cannot see any simple way within the Mac Word User Interface (again, not sure about the Windows side) to make your own choices. Word's Object Model does not seem to have any direct way to deal with this either. The expectation from Word 2007 onwards seems to be that you work with various XML files to achieve what you need, but as usual, the available documentation does not seem particularly informative as to how you modify the factory-supplied styles.
However, with VBA, even on the Mac side, in Word 2011 it is possible to export the "ThemeFontScheme" for the current theme for a document. That creates a .xml file that you can edit (e.g. swap Arial and Times around) and then re-import.
For example, to export the ThemeFontScheme from the Active Document to a file, you can use VBA like this:
Sub exportThemeFontScheme()
Dim dt As Office.OfficeTheme
Set dt = ActiveDocument.DocumentTheme
' Substitute your username for "username"
dt.ThemeFontScheme.Save "Macintosh HD:Users:username:Documents:myfontscheme.xml"
Set dt = Nothing
End SubYou should then be able to edit that XML (e.g. in Mac OS X TextEdit) to define the fonts you need. I won't attempt the details right now but will try to edit this Answer when I have had a better look.
Save the resulting file. Then, you can re-import the FontScheme into the current document, using, e.g.
Sub importThemeFontScheme()
Dim dt As Office.OfficeTheme
Set dt = ActiveDocument.DocumentTheme
' Substitute your username for "username"
dt.ThemeFontScheme.Load "Macintosh HD:Users:username:Documents:myfontscheme.xml"
Set dt = Nothing
End SubAs you can tell, this is not a familiar area for me either!
1I have described an alternative way of doing this for Word 2011 in another post, and I have successfully applied the file that I generated for 2011 to Word 2016 (Word 15).
However for a clean version of Word 2016 the theme font xml files do not appear to be available. The procedure I have got to work is as follows. My objective was to set default fonts of Century Gothic (Headings) and Palatino Linotype (Body) to replace my already personalized Helvetica/Times combination.
Open PowerPoint (sic) — new empty document.
Go to the Design tab. From the first block of theme icons chose a graphic theme that suits you while you are about it, although this is irrelevant to the font.
‘Save Current Theme’ (below theme icons in pull-down) under a suitable name, e.g. ‘CenturyPal’. This will save CenturyPal.thmx to:
~Library/Group Containers/ Content/Themes
- Quit PowerPoint without saving your document. Find CenturyPal.thmx in your file space, copy it somewhere suitable, and open it with an advanced text editor like BBEdit. You want to edit theme1.xml — see graphic below.
Find
<a:majorFont><a:latin typeface=and change the following text to ‘Century Gothic’ (or your desired major font) from whatever it is currently. (Mine was Helvetica Neue because that was my default. Yours would probably be Cambria.)Find
<a:minorFont><a:latin typeface=and change the font to ‘Palatino Linotype’ (or your desired minor font) from whatever it is currently. (Mine is Times New Roman. Yours may be Calibri.)
Save and return the edited CenturyPal.thmx file to the themes folder in ~Library…
Open Word, select the Design tab, then the ‘Themes’ icon on the extreme left.
Chose CenturyPal.
Click the tick box, ‘Set as Default’, and click ‘Yes’ on the dialogue box to confirm that you wish to change the defaults.
Go back to the Home tab. Check your fonts. The defaults are now Century Gothic and Palatino (or whatever you chose).
Quit and restart Word. The new defaults should have stuck.
Addendum re High Sierra
When I recently upgraded to High Sierra, Office upgraded itself and lost my custom font setting. Repeating the above restored them successfully.
