Activating the Dark Mode in Excel

Steps to Activate the Dark Mode

1. First, click on the File Tab.
   
2. And open the Excel options.
   
3. Now, in the “General” tab, go to “Personalize your copy of Microsoft Office”.
   
4. From the “Office Theme” drop-down, select “Black”.
   
5. In the end, click “OK”.
   

When you click OK, it applies dark mode to Excel, leaving the spreadsheet part as it is. But the rest of the window will be entirely black.

There’s one thing you need to know: when you change Excel’s appearance, it also makes changes to other Office applications, like Word and PowerPoint.

But as you can see, in Word, it changes the entire window into dark mode, while in Excel (with this setting alone), you still have white cells and black text. And if you are using Excel on Mac, you need to go to the Excel ⇢ Preferences… ⇢ General, and un-tick “Turn off Dark Mode”.

Turn the Cells Dark with Switch Modes (Microsoft 365)

Excel for Windows in Microsoft 365 now has a real dark mode for the worksheet as well, so the cells turn dark and the text turns light. Here’s how to use it:

1. First, make sure the Office Theme is “Black” (or “Use system setting” with Windows in dark mode). You can check it in File ➜ Account ➜ Office Theme.
2. After that, open the worksheet and go to the View tab.
3. In the end, click “Switch Modes”. Click it again to go back to white cells.

This only changes how the sheet looks on your screen. The file still prints with a white page, and other people who open the file see it in their own mode. If you don’t see the Switch Modes button, your version of Excel doesn’t have this option yet, and you can use the method below.

Turning Cells into Dark Mode and Font as White

There’s a simple hack that you can use to turn your cells into dark mode in any version.

1. Add a Black Background with an image.
2. Change the Font Color to White in the theme.

Use these steps:

1. First, open PowerPoint on your system and add a single slide.
   
2. After that, click on the Design tab and go to “Format Background”.
   
3. Now, change the color to Black or any other dark color you want. I have used the (HEX: #3a3a3a) color code to get a custom dark color.
   
4. Then go to the File Tab, click “Save As”, and save the presentation in the PNG file format (image). Or you can download it from here.
   
5. Now return to Excel and go to the “Page Layout” tab. From there, click on the “Background” button.
   
6. Next, locate the background image we have just saved and apply it.
   

It will convert Excel into complete dark mode.

But there’s one thing you still need to change: the font color. So, go to the Page Layout ⇢ Themes ⇢ Colors ⇢ Customize Colors.

In the customized color, change the font color to white or any light color you want. And name it “Dark Theme”.

Now you have a completely dark theme with black cells and white font.

You can also save the entire current theme: Page Layout ⇢ Themes ⇢ Themes ⇢ Save Current Theme…, and name it “Dark Theme”.

Important Points

1. Adding a black background with an image only works in the current worksheet, and the background image doesn’t print.
2. Changing the font color with the theme only works for the active workbook.

Even though these steps are not hard to follow, a toggle to switch between dark and light modes with a single click was missing for a long time. Microsoft has now added it as Switch Modes (explained above) in Excel for Windows in Microsoft 365, but it’s not there in older versions.

You can go to this link and submit feedback to let Microsoft know what you need. And I’m opening comments for this post so that you can ask your question if you are facing a problem.

Frequently Asked Questions