How to create a custom theme in Microsoft Word Mac 2011

In looking for exactly the same thing, I found that microsoft has developed a free Theme Builder. You can find it on the MS website and there is a good discription of it here. How to Create Personalised Themes for Office. The software is free (opensource) and Microsoft provides an explanation of how to use it here. MS Theme Builder. This explains the PC version but I imagine that it is the same process for Mac.

While MS Theme Builder seems to solve the problem, I could not find a version for OS X using the links provided.

To avoid having to run Theme Builder in a virtual machine, it is also possible to create custom theme font definitions by doing some very simple XML file editing. By googling, I found several articles describing the procedure, e.g. this one:

http://www.indezine.com/products/powerpoint/learn/themes/create-cus-theme-fonts-xml-ppt2011-mac.html

You basically copy an XML file defining one of the built-in theme font packages to a user folder (if you have redefined your user template location, you should copy the XML file to your custom location, not the location under ~/Library/Application Support/ specified in the article), and then you edit the XML file to change the font names. (There is also a text that needs to be changed in order to match the file name.) I can confirm that it works in Word 2011. Word needs to be restarted for any additions or changes to take effect.

The same procedure is supposed to work for colors (the folder locations are adjacent), although I have not tried it.

I created a new color theme in PowerPoint ("Create Theme Colors" in the Colors drop-down list) and then save the theme as a .thmx file in the [myUsername] > Library > Application Support > Microsoft > Office > User Templates > My Themes > Theme Colors folder and then in Word I was able to click on "Browse Themes" in the Themes Drop-down and find my custom .thmx file to load. That worked for loading the colors, but I have yet to figure out how to load a custom font theme.

Kind of a hassle to have to do it through PowerPoint, but at least it works.