Changing the color scheme for Office 2007

There are many things I love about Office 2007. I think the ribbon is great and I cannot even remember how to work without it when I am on a computer with an older version of Office. But what I have always wondered is who decided that baby blue was the right choice for a default color scheme in Office 2007. Every time I see it I want to cringe. Maybe I am just too picky… For anyone not sure what I mean, here is what Excel looks like by default:

The first time I wanted to change this I had a pretty difficult time finding where to do it and I was recently reminded of it again while setting up a new computer. Here are the steps to change the color scheme while in Excel:

1. Click on the Office button (in the upper right corner)
2. Click on Excel Options
3. Choose Popular on the left panel
4. Chose an option under the Color scheme drop-down:

There are not too many choices, but at least there is an option for something other than baby blue. Note – this will change the color scheme for all the Office applications that have options for different color schemes. If you would like instructions on changing this from other Office applications, take a look at this Office Online help article.

Update on 11/18/2010: I just got a question about changing the color scheme for Office 2010 and found the answer here.