Downloaded & Custom Themes "Disappear"

[MK of MK/UK]

PowerPoint 2007 SP1 on Vista.
I had downloaded some themes from the MS site, and made a few changes and
saved the themes, which were visible as custom themes. Today they weren't
there. I downloaded one again, and it appeared as a custom theme. Tracing
the directory I discovered the "lost" themes. The only thing I had done
since I last used them was create a presentation using a PPT 2003 template
and run a McAfee clean-up utility.
How do I restore the entries in the themes menu?

 

[Lucy Thomson]

Hi MK

I'm no expert on this but have a read of Echo's page:
http://www.echosvoice.com/2007/whatgoeswhere.htm

If you have questions I'm sure the great woman herself will be along later


Lucy

 

[Echo S]

Oh, you flatterer, you.

Only thing I know to do here is put 'em back in the appropriate folders. I
guess the clean-up utility must have moved them or something.

Oh, it may be that, if the themes in use were saved somewhere else on the
harddrive, they were showing up as "used in this file," but not necessarily
in the "custom themes" section. Hard to say, though.

 

[MK of MK/UK]

Thanks for the replies.

The 'disappeared' themes are visible if I follow the drop-down lists beside
Colors, Fonts, Effects on the design ribbon.

To check the files I searched for the "twilight" theme that I downloaded on
the 2nd July, and which appears in the Custom Themes section on the ribbon.
I also searched for the "firelight" theme that I downloaded some weeks ago
and is not in the Custom Themes section.

Both have .eftx, .thmx, .xml files where expected in Roaming\Microsoft\
Templates \ Document Themes though twilight does not have an XML file in
Theme Fonts. Twilight also has shortcuts in the recent items directory, but
that's irrelevant.

I deleted the firelight files in the search window, and confirmed in
PowerPoint that the color, effects & fonts were not present. I downloaded
Firelight from the office page, restarted PowerPoint, and the theme is now
visible as a custom theme.

So I have a work-around for the office themes I can download, but not for
those I modified and saved. There must be some data somewhere that tells
Powerpoint what custom themes to display, and it is not created when
PowerPoint is loading by scanning the themes directory.

How do I edit that data?

Mike Kelly

 

[Echo S]

When you're saving them after editing, are you saving them to that folder?
(C:\Users \ UserName \ AppData \ Roaming \ Microsoft \ Templates \ Document
Themes ) They *should* show up. What file type are you saving them as?

Usually, if you choose Office Button | Save As and choose "template POTX,"
you'll be taken directly to the appropriate folder -- but it's the one above
the themes folder, because that's where template files generally go so they
show up when you use Office Button | New. (C:\Users \ UserName \ AppData \
Roaming \ Microsoft \ Templates )

When you choose theme THMX files in the "save as type" dropdown, it takes
you all the way to the Document Themes folder. (C:\Users \ UserName \
AppData \ Roaming \ Microsoft \ Templates \ Document Themes ) And, off the
top of my head, I *think* even PPTX files will usually show up in the custom
part of the themes gallery if you save them in that folder. (Okay, just
checked -- PPTX files show up here if they're saved in that folder, too.)

I'll try to edit a file based on the Twilight theme later and see if I can
get it to show up. I suspect you're saving a file based on that theme, but
it's not making it to the right folder.

Ah, heck. Just tried it. It works here. Can you double-check which folder
you're saving what file type to?

 

[MK of MK/UK]

I've found the problem.

The "disappeared" thmx files are all set to hidden. When I removed the tick
from the box in the properties and restarted PowerPoint the themes were
displayed in the custom themes ribbon.

Thanks for the dialogue: explaining the problem and your feedback produced
the solution, though I've no idea why it happened initially.

Mike

 

[Echo S]

How odd. But I'm definitely glad to hear you got it working!