How To Change the Color of Office 2010

This is, in essence, an update to my previous post, How To Change The Color Of Office 2007.

If you’re running the beta version of Microsoft Office 2010 (available free (as in beer!) from the Microsoft website), you can change the color scheme from blue (default) to black or silver, just like in Office 2007.  If you’ve already changed the color, I found that Office 2010 preserved that change upon install.  If you haven’t yet, or if you want to switch the color, or if it didn’t preserve that color change, here’s how to do it:

For pictures with each step, see this Instructable.

0.  Steps 1 – 3 detail how to download the Office 2010 Beta.  If you already have it, skip to step 4.

1.  Go to this site and click through the various Download Now buttons until you can actually download the installer.  You’ll need a Windows Live ID (if you don’t have one, click the link anyways; the site’ll tell you how to make one) and you’ll have to sign up (email, name, country) to use the beta. 

2. Save the installer to your Desktop or wherever you put installer downloads, DON’T CHANGE THE FILE NAME.

3. Once the download completes, run the uninstaller.  Follow the instruction in the subsequent window.

4.  Open any Office 2010 window (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc)

5. Click on ‘File.’  In different programs, this button will be different colors:  Red in PowerPoint, Blue in Word, Green in Excel, and so on.

6. Click Options, the second-to-last button.

7.  Make sure the subsequent window is set to the ‘General’ tab. 

8.  Under the dropdown list titled Color Scheme currently set to blue, choose either Black or Silver.  I personally prefer the black scheme.

9.  Click OK.

10.  You’re done!  Doing this affects the following Office 2010 windows: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, OneNote, and Publisher.  I do not have any other Office programs.

Screenshots!

Black

Silver