Not just the font: Office has a new default theme as well

Microsoft unveiled a new font for Office and Microsoft 365 last week, but this is not the only major that is coming to Office products such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

On July 19th, 2023, Microsoft PowerPoint product manager Jess Kwok announced that a new Office theme is coming to Microsoft 365 applications. Kwok notes that the PowerPoint team worked hand in hand with the Word, Excel and Outlook teams to create a new Office theme for use in all of those applications.

The new Office theme as a "default font, color palette, style, and line weight" to modernize documents and improve their accessibility.

The new default font Aptos was picked by Microsoft over four other fonts. The selection process involved users and their feedback. Aptos, which was called Bierstadt initially, replaces the font Calibri, which has been the standard font in Office applications for 15 years. Aptos supports "a variety of weights and includes variants such as narrow, serif, and monospace".

The teams researched color palettes and design trends to create a new default color palette for all Office applications. The default outline weights have increased in Office and Microsoft says that it has improved "consistency between shapes and lines, and added better contrast" as well.

Last but not least, Microsoft is refreshing the default Word and Outlook styles to "make them easy to read, look more professional, and easy to navigate".

The company posted the following comparison to visualize the classic and new Office theme.

Right now, the new theme is only available to Microsoft 365 Insiders.

How to continue using the classic Office theme and styles

The classic theme and font remain available in future versions of Microsoft Office. While the defaults have changed, Office users and Microsoft 365 administrators may continue using the classic font, theme and formatting.

The previous Office theme is available as Office Theme 2013-2022. Calibri remains available as a font, which users may select from the available font listing for individual documents, or by resetting it as the default font in Office applications.

The changes will be applied to Office apps automatically. The new theme will be used automatically once it is released by Microsoft.

Microsoft published guides for users to restore the original functionality. Here are the main guides:

Default Office font

Default Office theme colors

Now You: what is your take on the new Office theme and font?

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