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Apply a professional look to your drawings with themes

A theme in Visio is a set of colors and effects that you can apply to a drawing with a single click. Themes are a quick way to give your drawings a professionally designed look. 

You can change colors for all shapes (or certain shapes) at once by applying a theme. 

Apply a theme

  1. On the Design tab, in the Themes group, click the More arrow .

  2. Hold your mouse pointer over a theme to see a preview on the drawing page.

  3. Click the theme to apply it.

Clicking a theme applies it either to the current page or to all pages in your drawing, depending on the option setting. To change the setting, right-click a theme, and then click Apply to Current Page or Apply to All Pages.

Quick tips:

  • To remove the current theme from all shapes, on the Design tab, in the Themes group, click No Theme.

  • To remove the theme from selected shapes, on the Home tab, in the Shape Styles group, click Remove Theme.

  • Some themes also contain a background color. To apply the new background color with the theme, on the Design tab, in the Backgrounds group, click Backgrounds and select the background that you want.

  • If you don’t want the theme background color to appear when you print, click File > Print > Print All Pages (or the first button under Settings), and then click No Background.

  • After you apply a theme, that theme is applied to any shapes you add to the drawing. To temporarily disable this functionality, in the Themes group, click More , and then clear the Apply Theme to New Shapes selection.

Prevent themes from affecting a shape

You may not want a theme to apply to every shape in a drawing. For example, if you have a traffic sign in your drawing, you probably do not want its fill color or pattern to change when you apply a theme.

To prevent themes from applying to a specific shape, you can either not allow themes for that shape or you can protect the shape from theme colors or theme effects.

Prevent a theme from applying to a shape

  1. Select the shape.

  2. On the Home tab, in the Shape Styles group, click More , and then clear the Allow Themes check box.

Use a text, line, or fill color that doesn't change with the theme

  • Select the shape.

  • Do one of the following:

    • On the Home tab, in the Shape Styles group, click Fill or Line, and then select one of the colors under Standard Colors.

    • On the Home tab, in the Font group, click the Font Color change text color button, and then select one of the colors under Standard Colors.

See Also

Create a custom theme

Apply a theme and theme color to the diagram

  1. Open the diagram for editing.

  2. On the ribbon, select Design > Themes Themes icon.

  3. Select a theme from the list.

    List of themes
  4. On the ribbon, select Design > Theme Colors Themes Colors icon.

  5. Select a theme color from the list.

    List of theme colors

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