How to enable Black Theme in Office 2016 VL

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Apparently Microsoft have disabled the "Black Theme" for all current versions of Office except subscription 365.
REG key is at "HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common" -- it is a 32-bit DWORD entry, "UI Theme" whose value should be "4" for Black Theme. It still exists in Office 2016 but every time you launch an office application, that reg entry is replaced. A workaround is to set it to "4" and then make the "\Common" key read-only to your user account -- virtualcustoms.net/showthread.php/72255-Windows-10-Black-Edition-for-Windows-10-Anniversary-Update-aka-Redstone-One/page20?p=321578&viewfull=1#post321578 . Hopefully someone can find a more elegant workaround to this! I love Black Theme and am not interested in 365 subscription

 

Here is how I do it. It takes a little bit of time to set up, but it works without any other user intervention once you have set it all up. The only Office program which you can not change is Access, and you never could switch it to black theme. You need to first make a folder. I have many customizations so everything I tell you from now on is specific to this folder. You would need to change the paths if you put it anywhere else. The folder I have everything in is C:\Customizations\OfficeBlackTheme. For each office program, Word, Excel, Outlook, etc. I have TWO files. I also have the regedit file which does the registry changing. This is absolutely guaranteed to work. The registry file I have named Blacktheme.reg and is

Code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common]"UI Theme"=dword:00000004
"PendingUITheme"=-

I will next give examples for Word, you can take care of the other office programs. This is a command file called word.cmd

Code:

regedit.exe /S C:\Customizations\OfficeBlackTheme\blacktheme.reg
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\WINWORD.EXE"
regedit.exe /S C:\Customizations\OfficeBlackTheme\blacktheme.reg

The next file is a vbs file so that you do not see the cmd window flash each time you open an Office Program. I named it word.vbs.

Code:

Dim WinScriptHost
Set WinScriptHost = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
WinScriptHost.Run Chr(34) & "C:\Customizations\OfficeBlackTheme\word.cmd" & Chr(34), 0
Set WinScriptHost = Nothing

Now you go to your Start menu, find where the shortcuts are kept, and replace the path in the shortcut with the path for the vbs script. Now when you click on your Office program from your start menu it will open Black each, and every time. Note that this only works if you open the program, and not a document or its shortcut. You must open the program first, then open your document from within.

 

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Perhaps. I have not tried it on x86 version. Perhaps you would need to change a registry value. Do a search in the registry.

 

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I guess the registry protection is needed in case the values would reset.
So, I followed you instrutions until "Change "PendingUITheme" to 4. If "PendingUITheme" dword does not exist; create it per usual with value of 4.".
Then, I ran Word.
No cigar; I still get the Dark Gray theme.
When I exit Word, both values in the registry are still present.

I used a registry monitor and I can see that WinWord.exe is reading the 4 bytes from "UI Theme".
However, it won't even look for a "PendingUITheme" value... (not sure where you go the idea that it would work)
Neither one of these are written, either.

So, still no black theme on retail copy.

Any ideas?

Thank you!

 

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Would love to know this as well, the above did not work, it only shows the 3 colors. At work I have 365 and Black theme shows up fine but on a PC with Volume License black does not exist no matter what Reg VB tweaks i try... I'm going to guess this is just no possible.