How to Create a Microsoft Office 365 Theme for WPF Applications

ComponentOne WPF Edition provides 20+ pre-designed themes for .NET 9 WPF applications, including several Microsoft Office 365-inspired themes. Applying an Office 365 theme in your WPF application is as easy as writing one or two lines of code.

In this blog, we’ll guide you through applying an Office 365 theme in a WPF .NET 9 application. We’ll also show you what each of the provided themes looks like so you can achieve the best look for your application.

We will review:

• What is a WPF Office 365 Theme?
• Preview WPF Office 365 Themes
• How to Apply the Office 365 Theme

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What is a WPF Office 365 Theme?

Our WPF Office 365 themes are designed to mimic the visual style of Microsoft Office applications, bringing a clean, professional appearance to your software. The themes are available in several light and dark variations and can be customized to align with your brand’s color scheme.

Best of all, our Office 365 themes work seamlessly with both ComponentOne and standard .NET controls, ensuring consistent styling throughout your WPF application.

Preview WPF Office 365 Themes

The ComponentOne WPF Office 365 themes were added as part of the 2024 v2 release. There are four color variations, including white, black, dark gray, and colorful.

Office 365 White Theme

Office 365 Black Theme

Office 365 Dark Gray Theme

Office 365 Colorful Theme

How to Apply the Office 365 Theme

First, add a reference to the latest C1.WPF.Themes.Office365 nuget package for the White or Colorful theme, or add a reference to the C1.WPF.Themes.Office365Dark nuget package for the Black or Dark Gray themes.

Note that the WPF Office 365 themes support .NET 7, .NET 8, .NET 9, and higher versions of .NET.

You can apply WPF themes in three ways (choose one approach):

1. Apply the theme to the entire window by code in the constructor of your application.

C1.WPF.Themes.C1ThemeOffice365White myTheme = new C1.WPF.Themes.C1ThemeOffice365White();
myTheme.Apply(this); // applies theme to entire window

2. OR - apply the theme to any part of the XAML UI tree:

<c1:C1ThemeOffice365White xmlns:c1="http://schemas.componentone.com/winfx/2006/xaml">
    <!-- Content -->
</c1:C1ThemeOffice365White>

3. OR - apply the theme to the entire application by adding it to your merged dictionaries.

Application.Current.Resources.MergedDictionaries.  
    Add(C1.WPF.Themes.C1Theme.GetCurrentThemeResources(new C1.WPF.Themes.C1ThemeOffice365White()));  

Check out a complete sample with our WPF ThemeExplorer.

Conclusion

The ComponentOne WPF themes make it easy to quickly apply a complete theme to your entire application or window. Unlike rigid, fixed-color themes, the Office 365 themes in ComponentOne WPF are also adaptable. By simply defining a few colors in XAML, you can tweak the background, accent colors, and highlights to create a cohesive look across your application.

For more information, check out our previous blog, How to Create a Custom WPF Material Theme, in which we review how to customize a theme.

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