Office Background in PowerPoint 365 for Windows

Office Backgrounds are patterns that are applied to the Ribbon in your Microsoft Office program interface. These are more like patterned strips than backgrounds. As you can see in Figure 1, below, our PowerPoint 365 interface sports a simple orange background. This is the default state, and no Office Background has been applied yet.

Figure 1: PowerPoint without any Office Background applied

Of course, you can apply the Office Background, as shown highlighted in green within Figure 2, below. Notice the small patterned strip visible on the top right area of the Ribbon interface. You’ll see that no such pattern showed in the area highlighted in green within Figure 1, above. It does look like PowerPoint just got tattooed!

Figure 2: Office Background applied to PowerPoint 365 interface

By default, these patterned strips are not turned on. We show you how you can enable and change Office Backgrounds in this tutorial. Fourteen such image strips provide a touch of customization for your PowerPoint interface. And although we are quite content with the default no-patterned-strip option, we agree that they can be fun to explore!

Follow these steps to change the Office Background in PowerPoint 365 for Windows:

1. If you have launched PowerPoint, choose Account, as shown highlighted in green within Figure 3, below. Alternatively, if you already have a presentation open, choose the File menu to bring up the Backstage view, and select Account.
2. 
   Figure 3: Access Accounts in PowerPoint
2. Either way, you bring up the Account tab of Backstage view, as shown in Figure 4, below. Locate the Office Background option, highlighted in red within Figure 4, and click the downward-pointing arrow on the right side of the box highlighted in blue within Figure 4.
3. 
   Figure 4: Locate the Office Background option
3. Clicking the downward-pointing arrow brings up a drop-down list, as shown in Figure 5, below.
4. 
   Figure 5: Office Background drop-down list
5. Note that No Background option is selected by default, as shown in Figure 5, above. You can also choose from one of the fourteen available backgrounds. We selected Circuit. The selected background graphic will appear as a tattoo-like pattern on the top right corner of the PowerPoint application window, as shown highlighted in green within Figure 2, shown previously on this page.
5. To turn off a previously selected background, you can follow the same steps, and in Step 3, select the No Background option. To change the background, you can also choose another patterned strip.