Skip to content

7.8 Themes and Templates

Themes and templates let you reuse a design, so your workbooks share the same look without formatting every visual by hand.

Themes

A theme is simply another workbook whose visuals serve as design models – e.g. a table, a chart and a gauge formatted in your company's style. Many projects keep their themes in a Themes folder under Workbooks.

On the THEME tab (design mode):

Command What it does
Theme (select theme) Choose the workbook to use as theme
Edit theme Opens the theme workbook, so you can change the models
Clear/remove theme Removes the theme from the workbook

A workbook can't be its own theme.

Templates

A template is a saved design for one visual. To apply one, select a visual and pick a template in the Template list on the THEME tab. The list shows the templates that fit the selected type of visual:

  • templates saved in the project – they are in the Templates folder of the main window, and
  • the visuals of the same type in the workbook's theme.

Clear template removes the template from the selected visual.

Changing the Colours of a Whole Workbook

There is no single colour switch for a workbook. Depending on what you want to change:

To change … Use
The colours used by charts and highlights in all workbooks The Corporate colors and Pie Graph Color Sequence system rules – see 12.5 System Rules
The look of several visuals in this workbook, the same way A theme and templates, as described above
The colours and fonts of one table GRID tab → table style galleries, or HOME → Format – see 11.4 Table Styles
Colours that depend on the values, e.g. red below budget Rules – see 12.1 What are Rules