Changing Background Color Theme in Access 2016

[CD Tom]

I've installed Office 365 and when I bring up Access the back ground color is White, I've looked in the File, Account, but when I click on the Office Theme I only get two choices Colorful, White, no matter what I choose I only get the white. In Access 2007 I had the I had a choice of Blue Silver or Black.
How do I get my Blue back in Access 2016 any ideas.

Thanks

[zmbd]

Welcome to the new MS paradigm

MS> What's New and Improved in Office 2016 for Office 365 (read more)

Office Themes

In Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote, Outlook, Access, Project, Visio, and Publisher

Pick the Office theme that's right for you. The Dark Gray theme provides a high contrast look and feel that is easy on the eyes. The Colorful theme offers a modern and fresh look. The White theme provides a traditional Office look.

Learn more about changing the Office theme (read more)

The choices you have are the choices you have unless you can possibly find a hack... and people have been trying without much success, especially with Office360 where MS has total control of every file and setting you can possibly think of...

This is a continuation of the madness started with Office2013 where we had "White" "Light Grey" and "Dark Grey"

All you can do is complain to Microsoft, who appears to not care one whit about the end users' preferences. In one thread alone, there are 22 pages of complaints spanning from 2013 thru just last month, in the Microsoft Answers forum alone about this particular, "feature" for Office2013 and there are many more such threads and one already for Office2016.

[bentolsky]

While you can't change the background color, I've come up with a solution that effectively allows you to change the background color.

First, I've created a new form called "background" that is completely empty, very large (large enough to fill the screen of your largest monitor), and has a dark gray background. It is not modal or popup, it auto resizes and centers, fits to screen, has no borders, record selectors, navigation buttons, dividing lines, scroll bars, control button, close button, or min max button, and it is not movable. All it has a little bit of VBA in its On Got Focus property:

Private Sub Form_GotFocus()
  Dim db As DAO.Database
  Dim rst As DAO.Recordset
  Set db = CurrentDb
  Set rst = db.OpenRecordset("SELECT ID, FormName, FrmRpt FROM FormStack ORDER BY ID", dbOpenSnapshot)
  If rst.EOF Then
    DoCmd.OpenForm "frmMenu"
  Else
    While Not rst.EOF
      If rst.Fields("FrmRpt") = "Form" Then
        If FormIsOpen(rst.Fields("FormName")) Then
          Forms(rst.Fields("FormName")).SetFocus
        Else
          Call CloseFormStack(rst.Fields("FormName"))
        End If
      Else
        If ReportIsOpen(rst.Fields("FormName")) Then
          DoCmd.SelectObject acReport, rst.Fields("FormName")
        Else
          Call CloseFormStack(rst.Fields("FormName"))
        End If
      End If
      rst.MoveNext
    Wend
  End If
  rst.Close
  Set rst = Nothing
End Sub
 

NOTE: the line

DoCmd.OpenForm "frmMenu"

will open my menu form if no other form or report is open. Doing this is of course optional and you would want to change the name of the form that it opens.

I also created a table named "FormStack" that has the following fields:
ID (long integer, primary key)
FormName (short text)
FrmRpt (short text)

As for the other code which is saved in a separate module:

Public Sub FormStack(fName As String, frmrpt As String)
  Dim sSQL As String
  sSQL = "DELETE * FROM [FormStack] WHERE [FormName] = '" & fName & "'"
  DoCmd.RunSQL (sSQL)
  Dim Temp As Integer
  Temp = 1
  Dim db As DAO.Database
  Dim rst As DAO.Recordset
  Set db = CurrentDb
  Set rst = db.OpenRecordset("SELECT [ID], [FormName] FROM [FormStack] ORDER BY [ID]", dbOpenSnapshot)
  With rst
    While Not .EOF
      Temp = ![id] + 1
      .MoveNext
    Wend
  End With
  rst.Close
  Set rst = Nothing
  sSQL = "INSERT INTO [FormStack] ([ID], [FormName], [FrmRpt]) VALUES (" & Temp & ", '" & fName & "', '" & frmrpt & "')"
  DoCmd.RunSQL (sSQL)
End Sub
 
Public Sub CloseFormStack(fName As String)
  Dim sSQL As String
  sSQL = "DELETE * FROM [FormStack] WHERE [FormName] = '" & fName & "'"
  DoCmd.RunSQL (sSQL)
End Sub
 
Public Function FormIsOpen(strForm As String) As Boolean
    Dim a As String
    Dim Frm As Form
 
    On Error GoTo ErrHandler
 
    Set Frm = Forms(strForm)
    a = Frm.Caption
 
    FormIsOpen = True
 
FormIsOpenExit:
    Exit Function
 
ErrHandler:
    FormIsOpen = False
    Resume FormIsOpenExit
 
End Function
 

After this you need to insert the following code into every forms (but NOT subforms) Activate, On Open and On Close events:

Private Sub Form_Activate()
  Call FormStack("frmName", "Form")
End Sub
 
Private Sub Form_Close()
  Call CloseFormStack("frmName")
End Sub
 
Private Sub Form_Open(Cancel As Integer)
  Call FormStack("frmName", "Form")
End Sub
 

And for reports (but NOT subreports) this code:

Private Sub Report_Activate()
  Call FormStack("rptName", "Report")
End Sub
 
Private Sub Report_Close()
  Call CloseFormStack("rptName")
End Sub
 
Private Sub Report_Open(Cancel As Integer)
  Call FormStack("rptName", "Report")
End Sub
 

Of course you can still have other code in these events as well. And you will have to put in the correct name of each form or report.

What all this code will do is ensure that your forms and reports are always on top of the background form. Should you ever accidentally click the background form, it will restore focus to every open form or report in the appropriate order (in other words, you are effectively sending the background to the back).

Now this isn't without a few problems. First, this code will not work with tables or queries. If a table or query is open and you click on the background, they will wind up forever beneath the background, the only way to get it back is to open it from the Navigation Pane again. I consider this a minor problem as your end users should only be working with forms and reports, but it is a bit of a pain for a developer. The other problem is that you want the background to cover the entire background, and you don't know how large the end users monitor will be, so it is wise to make the background form excessively large. While scroll bars will be disabled on the background form, they are not disabled in Access itself, and since the background is larger than the access window, you will wind up with scroll bars in your access window. Luckily your scroll wheel on your mouse does not effect these scroll bars, and I've had no one complain about to me in the month that we have been using the application so this too I consider a minor issue.