Getting your own themes on Sharepoint 2013

In 2010 it was really easy to change the theme. All you needed to was open Powerpoint and make it look good there and then upload and apply the design to 2010.

In 2013 it’s been some changes, to make it less easy. Powerusers, it would seem, have no longer the trust of the Microsoft guys. It wasn’t obvious so here one way to it in 2013.

1. Download and install Sharepoint Color Palette Tool
2. Run Color Palette Tool, change Group By to UI Groups to make more logical.
3. Design to your hearts content, then save file to local drive (ex mydesign.spcolor)
4. Open Sharepoint Designer to the root of your site collection
5. Open All Files> _Catalogs\Theme\15\
6. Drop your mydesign.spcolor in the folder.
7. Create a new composed look to make it easy to switch to the new design
1. Site Settings> Web Designer Galleries> Composed Looks>new Item
2. Point to Theme URL to your mydesign.spcolor
3. Copy other settings from another Composed theme. Make sure you pick same Master Page as you’ve based your Color Palette theme on.
8. Now you can pick the new theme from the current site. Note that the composed theme seems to required to be created on every subsite, unless heritage can be activated in some fashion.

 

References:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38182 – Microsoft Sharepoint Color Palette Tool

http://en.share-gate.com/blog/create-sharepoint2013-theme-using-color-palette-tool – more detailed description on the procedure. Founders of this procedure.