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About this lesson

Switch between different themes and customize a theme. 

Quick reference

Form Themes

Apply a theme to a form and customize it. 

When to use

We apply a theme whenever we want to control the overall look and feel of the form or report. 

Instructions

Change the Theme

The default theme in Access is 'Office'. Themes not only define the colors in use in the form but also the fonts. 

  • Open 'frmTicketMaintenance'. 
  • Switch to Design View. 
  • In the Form Design tab, in the Themes group, click Theme. 

Hover the mouse over each theme to see a live preview. 

  • Select Ion from the gallery. 

Notice the theme applies the new color scheme and also different fonts. If the new font is bigger than the one previously in use, we may need to change the width of some of the fields to accommodate the larger font. 

When we select a theme, we can choose a different color scheme from the Colors dropdown without changing the overall theme. We can also select to use a different font from the Font drop-down. 

When we select a theme and change the palette and font we are effectively customizing the theme. 

  • In the Form Design tab, in the Themes group, click Colors. 
  • Choose the Green color palette. 
  • In the Form Design tab, in the Themes group, click Font. 
  • Select Cambria from the gallery. 

Saving the Theme

We can save a custom theme and reuse it again later. All custom themes are stored in a default folder location. Do not change this location or the theme will not appear in the Themes gallery. 

  • In the Form Design tab, in the Themes group, click Save Current Theme. 

The folder location will default to Templates/Document Themes. 

  • Type a name for your theme. 
  • Click Save. 
  • In the Form Design tab, in the Themes group, click Themes. 

Notice there is a new group called 'Custom' that contains the saved theme. 

Changing the Form Header

  • Change the Theme to Ion Boardroom. 
  • Change the Font to Calibri. 
  • Click on the form header area. 
  • From the Format tab, in the Control Formatting group, click Shape Fill. 
  • Choose a light purple color. 
  • Select the title text. 
  • From the Home tab, in the Font group, click the Font drop-down and select White. 

Changing the Form Background

  • Click on the Details area. 
  • From the Property Sheet, in the Back Color field, click the three dots. 
  • Choose a light grey color from the palette. 

Removing and Applying Borders

Removing a border
  • Click on the Category option group control. 
  • From the Property Sheet, in the Border Style field, click the drop-down arrow and change it to Transparent. 
Adding a border
  • Click on the RelatedTickets subform in 'frmTicketMaintenance'. 
  • From the Format tab, in the Control Formatting group, click Shape Outline. 
  • Select a color and a line thickness. 

Review the changes in Form View.

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  • 00:04 In this lesson we're going to explore themes in a bit more detail,
  • 00:09 because themes are the main way that you can control stylistic
  • 00:13 options in your forms and reports.
  • 00:16 And it's important for you to understand the concept behind themes.
  • 00:20 Now I've got the ticket maintenance form currently open.
  • 00:25 And if we right click and jump into design view,
  • 00:28 notice on the form design ribbon we have a Themes drop down.
  • 00:32 And you can see at the top of this gallery the theme that's currently in
  • 00:37 use in this database.
  • 00:39 Now when I first opened Access and before I even started to build this database,
  • 00:44 I didn't change my theme or pick a theme to use.
  • 00:48 So by default, Access selects the Office theme.
  • 00:52 And that's the one that's been in use throughout this course.
  • 00:56 But there are other themes that we can choose to apply to our forms and reports.
  • 01:02 Now one important thing to remember about themes is that they not only define
  • 01:07 the colors in use in your forms, but they also define the fonts in use as well.
  • 01:12 So if I hover my mouse over some of the other themes in this gallery,
  • 01:16 you'll notice that it changes in the live preview behind.
  • 01:21 So I can kind of get a good idea as to what that theme is going to look like,
  • 01:24 before I click to apply it.
  • 01:26 So for example, if I was to select this theme here, Ion,
  • 01:30 notice that the font has also changed for all of my fields.
  • 01:34 And because this is a much bigger font, if I wanted to use this,
  • 01:38 I would probably have to go in and
  • 01:40 start making some adjustments to the width of these fields to accommodate the text.
  • 01:45 Now because I've selected that theme, I can choose a color palette to use.
  • 01:50 So each theme has numerous different color palettes that fall within that theme.
  • 01:55 I can also specify the fonts that I want to use for this theme as well.
  • 01:59 So if I select a different color palette, let's go for this one just here.
  • 02:05 And maybe I want to choose some different fonts.
  • 02:07 I'm going to go for Calibri.
  • 02:09 So now that I've effectively customized the Ion theme,
  • 02:13 I could save this as my own custom theme.
  • 02:16 So if I go up to Themes and Save Current Theme, I'm going to call this DA Custom.
  • 02:23 And note, it's jumped me straight to the Document Themes folder.
  • 02:27 So if I click on Save in here, now when I click on Themes,
  • 02:31 notice that my custom theme is available for me to use just here.
  • 02:36 So if you want to create your own themes, that is absolutely fine.
  • 02:39 Now I'm actually going to change this theme.
  • 02:41 Let's use this one just here, I quite like that purple color.
  • 02:45 So when we apply a theme, we can then go through and
  • 02:48 start customizing different elements.
  • 02:51 Now, I actually don't want to use this style of font.
  • 02:54 I'm going to use, let's go for Calibri again.
  • 02:58 So now I'm using the colors of the theme, but not the fonts.
  • 03:02 Now if I click on the background of this header area,
  • 03:05 notice the background color is set to text 2, lighter 80%.
  • 03:09 And if I want to change this, I could choose something else.
  • 03:13 And you can see we have all different kinds of theme styles that we can select.
  • 03:18 So I could choose background, light header, maybe background dark header.
  • 03:23 All of these are going to give us something completely different.
  • 03:27 And if I want to have even more control over the color in the background,
  • 03:31 I can jump up to the Format tab and select a color from the palette.
  • 03:35 And again, notice this theme color section is going to pull from
  • 03:40 the theme that you have selected or we have a palette of standard colors.
  • 03:45 So I'm going to choose a lighter purple color, and it might be that
  • 03:50 I now want to change this heading to white font so it really stands out.
  • 03:55 So I could select the text, and from the Font drop down I can change that to white.
  • 04:02 Now if we take a look at what this looks like in Form View, yep that looks pretty
  • 04:06 nice, maybe I want to change the background of this form as well.
  • 04:10 So let's go back into Design view.
  • 04:12 So if I click on the details area and
  • 04:14 make sure that you do have details selected in the property sheet.
  • 04:19 What I can do is choose to change the background color.
  • 04:22 If I click the three dots, it's going to open up my palettes.
  • 04:26 So I think I'm going to choose a light gray background color.
  • 04:30 So let's once again, check what that looks like in form view.
  • 04:35 Yeah, I think that's looking a lot better.
  • 04:37 Now one final thing I'm going to do here is I'm going to remove
  • 04:41 the border from the category area.
  • 04:44 And I'm going to put a border around the related ticket subform.
  • 04:48 So let's right click and go back into design view.
  • 04:51 And let's click on Category.
  • 04:53 So now if I take a look at my property sheet,
  • 04:56 I can see that we have a border style of solid.
  • 04:59 So I'm going to change this to transparent,
  • 05:02 just to get rid of that border.
  • 05:05 And let's check to make sure that that has worked, yes it has.
  • 05:09 Now the final change I'm going to make here from design view is just to put
  • 05:13 a border around the outside of this related tickets area.
  • 05:17 Now I can do this from the property sheet as well.
  • 05:19 I can choose the border style and the border width, or alternatively,
  • 05:23 I can do it from the Format tab by just changing the Shape Outline options.
  • 05:27 So let's go for a darker purple this time and
  • 05:30 I'm going to change the line thickness.
  • 05:33 Let's make that a little bit thicker.
  • 05:35 So now if we right click and take a look at our form in form view,
  • 05:39 that is what our form looks like.
  • 05:41 So it's really starting to look nice.
  • 05:44 So don't forget about your themes that you can change and your fonts.
  • 05:48 Remember that you can customize and create your own themes, and you can also define
  • 05:53 different background colors and colors of text in the property sheets.

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