Where are Office Themes and Templates Located?

Explore default locations of built-in Office Themes on your computer. These are the Themes that have been installed as part of Microsoft Office versions.

Product/Version: PowerPoint

OS: Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X

Date Created: May 17, 2018
Last Updated: July 2, 2021

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Haven’t you seen the Themes that PowerPoint shows you when you want to create a new presentation? These Themes show up in the Presentation Gallery and also within the Themes drop down galleries within PowerPoint. Where are those Themes located? Many times, you want to know why this information is not as easily accessible as it should have been. Luckily, we will try and solve this problem.

We will look at where the built-in Themes are located. If you want to find the location where your custom Themes and templates are saved, explore our Where Are Custom Office Themes and Templates Saved page.

Where Are Built-in Office Themes Located?

Depending upon where you installed Microsoft Office, the built-in Themes may be located in almost maze-like hidden subfolders! By default, this translates to these folder locations:

Office 365 on Windows 10

Office 2019 on Windows 10

Office 2016 on Windows 10, 8, and 7

Multiple locations may contain Themes installed with Microsoft Office on Windows:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Root\Document Themes 16
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Document Themes 16
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Root\Document Themes 16
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Document Themes 16
C:\Users\˂Username˃\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\LiveContent\16\Managed\Document Themes\˂LocaleID˃
C:\Users\˂Username˃\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\LiveContent\16\User\Document Themes\˂LocaleID˃
C:\Users\˂Username˃\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\LiveContent\16\Managed\Document Themes\˂LocaleID˃

translates to your user name, as in the user name you use to log in to Windows, whereas LocaleID is the language code for your version of Microsoft Windows. You can find a list of Locale IDs here.

Office 365 on macOS (Newer Versions)

Macintosh HD:Applications:Microsoft Office 2011:Office:Media:Office Themes

Office 2019 and 2016 on macOS (Also, older versions of Office 365)

Funnily enough, you cannot find any Themes anywhere within an Office 2019 or 2016 installation. Follow these steps to access the Themes:

Access the Macintosh HD:Applications folder. Locate the Microsoft PowerPoint icon, as shown in Figure 1, below.
Figure 1: Microsoft PowerPoint icon
Now Ctrl + click (or right-click) this icon, and choose the Show Package Contents option in the resultant menu, as shown in Figure 2, below.
Figure 2: Show Package Contents
You will now see the innards of the PowerPoint application! Browse to the Contents:Resources:Office Themes folder, where you will find all the Themes you have been looking for (see Figure 3 below).
Figure 3: Office Themes folder

Office 2013 on Windows 10, 8, and 7

Multiple locations may contain the Themes installed with the program:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Root\Document Themes 15
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Document Themes 15
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Root\Document Themes 15
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Document Themes 15
C:\Users\˂Username˃\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\LiveContent\15\User\Document Themes\˂LocaleID˃
C:\Users\˂Username˃\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\LiveContent\Managed\Document Themes\˂LocaleID˃
C:\Users\˂Username˃\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\LiveContent\15\Managed\Document Themes\˂LocaleID˃

translates to your user name, as in the user name you use to log in to Windows, whereas LocaleID is the language code for your version of Microsoft Windows. You can find a list of Locale IDs here.

Office 2011 on macOS

Macintosh HD:Applications:Microsoft Office:Office:Media:Templates:Office Themes

Office 2010 on Windows 8, 7, Vista, and XP

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Document Themes 14

Office 2008 on macOS

Macintosh HD:Applications:Microsoft Office:Office:Media:Templates:Office Themes

Office 2007 on Windows 8, 7, Vista, and XP

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Document Themes 12

Note: These paths assume that you installed to your C drive (on Windows) or the Macintosh HD drive (on Mac OS X). If you installed to another drive, you will substitute the drive in your path. Also, you may have changed the name of your Microsoft Office folder to Microsoft Office 2016 or a similar name for other versions of Microsoft Office. In that case, your paths may differ on account of different folder names.

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