Microsoft 365 makeover: Office docs are getting new default look

Significant changes are coming to your Office documents with Microsoft 365’s new default theme.

Microsoft Office, which was renamed Microsoft 365 a while ago, is about to release a round of drastic visual changes. Microsoft is giving its Office suite a new standard theme across all individual applications such as Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Outlook. Everything from fonts to colors to even line weights is getting new default settings.

The changes are intended to make documents created with Microsoft 365 look more modern and accessible, Microsoft says ( fave.co/455j2fx). Here’s a brief overview of what Office users will need to adjust to in the new default theme.

NEW STANDARD FONT: APTOS REPLACES CALIBRI

The first, most obvious change that every Microsoft 365 user will see immediately: Office will soon be using a new default font. Since 2013, Calibri has been the default for Office apps. But Microsoft users will now have five alternatives to choose from for a new default: • Bierstadt

• Grandview

• Seaford

• Skeena

• Tenorite

Bierstadt won the race and is now the new standard font for Microsoft 365, albeit under the name Aptos (1). Aptos supports a variety of font styles (such as normal, italic, bold, and so on) and variants such as narrow, serif, and monochrome.

As usual, you can of course use any other font available in Microsoft Office.

NEW COLOR PALETTE

Microsoft also researched popular color palettes and design trends and then created a set of standard colors that should work well in all Office applications (2). The motivation behind the change is to make your documents feel more accessible. The new colors are suitable for content such as charts, lists, and shapes.

NEW STYLE

Microsoft wanted to make the default style for Word documents and Outlook emails both easier to read and more professional looking (3). This set of changes should

make it easier for users to navigate through their documents.

NEW LINE WIDTHS

Microsoft has also increased the line widths, so the lines are thicker (4). This should lead to better consistency between shapes and lines. Microsoft has also improved the contrast.

HOW TO USE THE NEW MICROSOFT 365 THEME

With the introduction of the new theme, all new documents, presentations, worksheets, and emails you create in Word, Powerpoint, Excel, and Outlook will automatically have the new theme applied. You don’t need to take any special action to see it.

Your existing documents will not be changed to the new theme, however. They will continue to use the original design that was applied when they were created. You can continue to use the previous Office theme if you want to do so, but you’ll need to manually change to “Office Theme 2013–2022.”

AVAILABILITY

Currently, only Microsoft 365 Insider Testers can try out the new theme. These are the requirements:

Win32: Version 2308 (Build 16701.20000) or higher

Mac: Version 16.76 (Build 23070400) or higher

Android: Version 16.0.16701.20000 or higher

An IOS version isn’t available yet. Microsoft is not yet disclosing when all Microsoft 365 users will be swapped over to the new default theme. Until then, Calibri will remain the standard font in Office.