Change the Office Theme via VBA with RegEdit

[frabulator]

I have been trying to find a way to change the Office Theme via VBA, however everything I have read online says its not possible.

After some digging I found that the office theme is set in the registry under the following location:

Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\UI Theme

Where the values are as follows:

Name	Value	Description
msoNotThemeColor	0	Specifies no theme color.
msoThemeColorAccent1	5	Specifies the Accent 1 theme color.
msoThemeColorAccent2	6	Specifies the Accent 2 theme color.
msoThemeColorAccent3	7	Specifies the Accent 3 theme color.
msoThemeColorAccent4	8	Specifies the Accent 4 theme color.
msoThemeColorAccent5	9	Specifies the Accent 5 theme color.
msoThemeColorAccent6	10	Specifies the Accent 6 theme color.
msoThemeColorBackground1	14	Specifies the Background 1 theme color.
msoThemeColorBackground2	16	Specifies the Background 2 theme color.
msoThemeColorDark1	1	Specifies the Dark 1 theme color.
msoThemeColorDark2	3	Specifies the Dark 2 theme color.
msoThemeColorFollowedHyperlink	12	Specifies the theme color for a clicked hyperlink.
msoThemeColorHyperlink	11	Specifies the theme color for a hyperlink.
msoThemeColorLight1	2	Specifies the Light 1 theme color.
msoThemeColorLight2	4	Specifies the Light 2 theme color.
msoThemeColorMixed	-2	Specifies a mixed color theme.
msoThemeColorText1	13	Specifies the Text 1 theme color.
msoThemeColorText2	15	Specifies the Text 2 theme color.

Knowing this, I wrote a code that accesses the value and changes it, but I can not get Excel to refresh and apply the updates. Any ideas on how to make Excel read that the theme has changed in the registry?

Sub TestChange()
    ChangeThemeColor 3
End Sub

Public Sub ChangeThemeColor(Val As Long)
    RegLocation = "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\"
    Dim myRegKey As String
    myRegKey = RegLocation & "UI Theme"
    RegKeySave myRegKey, CStr(Val)
End Sub


Sub RegKeySave(i_RegKey As String, _
               i_Value As String, _
      Optional i_Type As String = "REG_SZ")
Dim myWS As Object

  'access Windows scripting
  Set myWS = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
  'write registry key
  myWS.RegWrite i_RegKey, i_Value, i_Type

End Sub

 

[frabulator]

as an update I have tweaked the code a little. I noticed an error in my previous where I was writing a string when it needed to be a dword.

Sub TestChange()
    ChangeThemeColor 3
    
End Sub

Public Sub ChangeThemeColor(Val As Long)
    RegLocation = "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\" & application.Version & "\Common\"
    Dim myRegKey As String
    myRegKey = RegLocation & "UI Theme"
    Dim myWS As Object
    'access Windows scripting
    Set myWS = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
    'write registry key
    myWS.RegWrite myRegKey, Val, "REG_DWORD"
 
End Sub