Change Theme Font in Microsoft Word (Mac) 15

Question

How does one change the Font associated with the Theme? I would rather not use Calibri.

Solution

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 Sub

You 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 Sub

As you can tell, this is not a familiar area for me either!

Comments

[Admin]

If you mean "change the theme fonts for the current document," then I believe you 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+modifications by clicking "Set as default". If you mean "modify the theme so that when you select that theme, it has the fonts you want", sorry, I do not know.

[vy32]

@bibadia, thanks for the pointer. Please submit as an answer, rather than as a comment. I tried the Fonts menu, selecting Arial & Times. Strangely, it made Times the headline font, Arial the body font in the menu, but it made the entire document Arial, with no way to make it Times...

[Admin]

I've made some additional comments about the fonts and how you might be able to swap them around in an edit to my Answer. Unfortunately, AFAICS some VBA is needed to do it. I've checked that it works in a simple case with Word 2011 but not in Mac Word 2016 yet.

[vy32]

Wow, thanks for all of the details. I'll check it out.