Word – How to add and save customized colours to ‘Standard Colors’, in Word

microsoft word

I ask about 'Standard', not 'Theme', Colors.

enter image description here

Best Answer

For .docx documents, you can add via themes additional colors to the Office color-picker as a new section called "Custom Colors" :

image

This is how to do that :

  • In Word, go to the Design pane
  • Click the down-arrow below Themes
  • Choose "Save Current Theme..."
  • Give a name and save the .thmx file, say as mytheme.thmx
  • Close Word
  • Open the save folder, normally
    C:\Users\{USER}\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\Document Themes
  • Copy your theme file elsewhere
  • Rename the file to mytheme.thmx.zip
  • Open the file and drill-down to theme, theme (again)
  • Copy the file theme1.xml and open it in a text editor

  • At the end of the file, just before the tag </a:theme>, add a a:custClrLst tag. Below is the text that produced the "Custom Colors" section in my above image :

    <a:custClrLst>
    <a:custClr name="Dark Blue">
    <a:srgbClr val="1F497D" />
    </a:custClr>
    <a:custClr name="Mint Green">
    <a:srgbClr val="99DB73" />
    </a:custClr>
    <a:custClr name="Girly Pink">
    <a:srgbClr val="FF99FF" />
    </a:custClr>
</a:custClrLst>

  • Save the theme1.xml and replace it in mytheme.thmx.zip

  • Rename the mytheme.thmx.zip back to mytheme.thmx and replace it in its original folder
  • Open Word. If the Custom Colors have not appeared, re-apply the template in the Design pane by clicking the down-arrow below Themes and re-assigning your template.

This new theme can be assigned to any Office document, not only Word.

References :

Related Question