Fast Five (Software) Features for Nonprofits 5/4: The beautification of Office docs

We are continuing our series of weekly tips and tricks, Fast Five Features, to help educate nonprofits about the features available in the software we provide as a donation to them.

We know nonprofits are often called upon to produce quick information for their board, clients or key stakeholders. While it may take some time to research the information needed, we hope to offer some tips and tricks that will help you quickly format that information, leaving you with a professional, branded document to share.

Office document themes are one way nonprofits (and others) can easily create or change the way a document is presented. Not to be confused with Windows themes that help you personalize your computer and desktop (and show off your latest vacation photos or cute kid smiles), these are themes in Office applications that help you apply consistent styles to your document’s colors, fonts and effects and make your documents look pretty and professional.

We hope these fast five tips for using themes in Office prove useful in your future document beatification efforts:

1. Get to know your themes In the Microsoft Office system, themes simplify the process of creating matching, professional-looking documents not only within one program but across multiple programs. And if you need specific colors, fonts and effects in your work, you can create customized themes from an existing theme library.
2. Using colors Changing theme colors is one of the most dramatic changes you can make to your Office document. With one click, you can change the tone of a document from casual to formal, or vice versa, by changing the theme colors.
3. Using fonts Professional document designers know that using a single font face for an entire document is always a tasteful and safe design choice. Two fonts are a better choice, when used carefully for contrast. Every Office theme defines two fonts — one for headings and one for body text.
4. Applying themes or quick styles Although themes change the overall colors, fonts, and effects that are used, Quick Styles change how they’re combined and which color, font, and effect is dominant when you’re designing how your information will look.
5. More! More! More! You can browse additional themes from Microsoft Office Online for more, more, more!