Themes and backgrounds
Change the workbook's theme, its colours or its fonts, and put a tiled picture behind a sheet's cells.
A theme is a set of twelve colours and two fonts — one for headings and one for body text — shared by the whole workbook. Table styles and charts take their colours from the theme, so changing the theme recolours every one of them at once. A sheet background is a picture tiled behind the cells.
Change the theme
- Open the first menu in Page Layout › Themes. It is named after the current theme — Office in a new workbook.
- Choose Office, Badge, Berlin, Ion, Retrospect or Slice.
Both the colours and the fonts change. The status bar names the theme and reminds you that table styles, charts and anything painted in a theme colour follow it.
Change only the colours or only the fonts
| Menu | What it changes |
|---|---|
| Page Layout › Themes › Colours | The palette of the theme you choose, keeping the current fonts. The status bar says, for example, Berlin colours. |
| Page Layout › Themes › Fonts | The heading and body fonts of the theme you choose, keeping the current colours. The menu lists each pair as heading font / body font, such as Calibri Light / Calibri, Trebuchet MS / Trebuchet MS or Century Gothic / Century Gothic. The status bar says, for example, Headings in Calibri Light, body in Calibri. |
Each theme change is one undo step.
The theme is saved in the workbook when you change it, so the workbook opens in Excel with the same colours and fonts. A theme you don’t change is saved exactly as it was read, including parts Nixt Sheets doesn’t use.
The colours in the ribbon’s Text colour and Fill colour palettes are fixed colours, not theme colours, so cells you colour with them keep their colour when the theme changes.
Add a background picture
- Show the sheet.
- Click Background in Page Layout › Background (its tooltip explains that the picture is tiled behind the cells and is on screen only).
- In the file picker, choose a PNG, JPEG, GIF or BMP picture.
The picture is repeated across and down the sheet behind the cells, starting at the top-left, and scrolls with the cells. Grid lines, fills and text are drawn on top of it. The status bar says Background set. Excel does not print a background and neither does this — it is there on screen only.
The picture is saved inside the workbook, not linked, so the workbook keeps it when you send it to someone.
If the file isn’t a picture that can be saved in a workbook, the status bar says That file is not a PNG, JPEG, GIF or BMP, so it cannot go in an .xlsx — the file would not open.
Remove the background
Click Delete background in Page Layout › Background — the button’s name changes once the sheet has a background. The status bar says Background removed.
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