Quick Take - Windows 7 (Revisited)

In my blog of 23 October 2010 entitled Quick Take - Windows 7, I ranted and railed against Microsoft's newest operating system for, among other things, not providing a mechanism for users to export their customized themes, especially cursors, sounds, and images.

Well, I was dead wrong. There is a way to export those settings to an external file and then subsequently import them into any another user account on any computer with Windows 7. Here's how:

1. Open "Control Panel | Appearance and Personalization | Personalization"
   
2. Pick an aero theme as a base
   
3. Make any changes you want to the desktop background, window color, sounds, and/or screensaver by clicking the appropriate icon(s) at the bottom of the screen
   
4. Make any changes you want to the desktop icons, mouse pointers, and/or screensaver by clicking the appropriate hyperlink(s) from the menu to the left of the screen
   
5. Click the "Save theme" link in the middle of the screen and assign a meaningful name for the theme
   

Your settings will be saved to a file in the following location:

     C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\
     Microsoft\Windows\Themes\
     [themename].theme

To make subsequent changes to your theme, open this .theme file with any text editor. At that point, you can change any or all of the settings within that text editor as an alternative to the control panel process listed above.

You can also copy your new file to the appropriate folder on another computer. By this simple process, you can implement your customized theme on any other computer operating with Windows 7—assuming, of course, that all sounds, cursors, and images referenced all happen to reside in the same folders on the new pc. To complete the transaction, simply open the "Control Panel | Appearance and Personalization | Personalization" window on the second computer and actively select the theme you just added.

Piece of cake, right? I'm sure you are wondering how I ever could have missed it. Me, too.