LDR Capital — Office Template System

We now have a single, consistent house style across PowerPoint, Word and Excel. Everything is driven by one shared theme, so colours, fonts, tables and charts look the same everywhere — and copy/paste between the apps just works.

What's in the set

App	Template	What it gives you
PowerPoint	LDR deck template (Widescreen, plus A4 Landscape, A4 Portrait & 4:3)	Brand layouts, real tables, styled charts, a component library to copy from
Word	Board Paper — Blank & Worked Example	Cover masthead, navy/cream tables, gold numbered lists, headers/footers
Excel	LDR workbook + branded default new workbook	Cell styles (Title/Heading/Input/Calc/Output…), $ / % / x formats, styled tables & charts
All three	LDR Capital theme (.thmx) + 2 chart templates (.crtx)	The shared colours/fonts and ready-made LDR column & doughnut charts

The palette & fonts (the same in every app)

Charcoal

Navy

Gold

Cream

Sage

Wine

Slate

Stone

Headings: Aptos Display · Body: Aptos. Colours are theme slots, never hard-coded — so re-skinning is a one-click job and pasted content re-colours to match.

How to use it day to day

Start from a template. In Word, PowerPoint or Excel go to File › New › Personal and pick the LDR template. New Excel workbooks are already branded automatically.

Use the building blocks. Don't rebuild tables or charts from scratch — copy one from the PowerPoint component library or the Excel Summary tab, then edit the numbers. In Excel, apply looks from Home › Cell Styles.

Moving a chart or table between apps? Paste with Use Destination Theme (the paste-options button, or Paste Special). Because every app shares the LDR theme, it instantly takes on the right colours and fonts.

The one rule that keeps everything tidy: always paste with “Use Destination Theme”, and colour shapes/cells using the theme swatches (the top row of the colour picker), not custom RGB. Do that and the brand stays perfect forever.

Why it all matches — the theme

The whole system hangs off one file: LDR Capital.thmx. It defines the 8 brand colours and the Aptos font pair, and Word, Excel and PowerPoint all read it. That's the trick a big firm pays a design agency for: change the theme once and the entire suite — every deck, doc and model — updates together.

Making it the default on every machine

The goal is that it's hard not to use the template. Office gives us a few built-in hooks; IT pushes the files into these per-user locations (via Intune / GPO logon script) and the templates simply become the defaults:

Lever	Where the file goes (per user)	Effect
Branded default workbook	%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART\book.xltx	Every new Excel workbook opens on-brand. Strongest lever.
Personal templates	…\Documents\Custom Office Templates\	All templates show under File › New › Personal in every app.
Shared theme	%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Templates\Document Themes\	LDR theme appears under Design › Themes everywhere.
Chart templates	%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Templates\Charts\	LDR charts appear under Insert › Chart › Templates.
Word default (optional, strongest)	Deploy a Normal.dotm carrying the LDR theme & styles	Every new Word doc opens on-brand. Note: replaces personal Normal.dotm.

Recommended rollout for IT

Put the master template set on a read-only network share (single source of truth).
Use Group Policy (Office ADMX) to set the Personal templates path and Workgroup templates path to that share, so every user sees them in File › New.
Use an Intune / GPO logon script to copy book.xltx into each user's XLSTART, and the theme/chart files into the folders above.
Optionally deploy a branded Normal.dotm to enforce the Word default.
Re-run the copy whenever the templates are updated — users always get the latest, automatically.

Already done on this machine as a working pilot: templates are in Custom Office Templates, the branded default workbook is in XLSTART, and the theme & chart templates are installed. Open Excel (new workbook is branded) or File › New › Personal in any app to try it.
To undo on a machine: delete XLSTART\book.xltx and the files in Custom Office Templates; nothing else is changed.

Where the files live

Master copies (the editable source): …\Claude\Projects\2026.06 - Templates\ — with PowerPoint\, Word\, Excel\ and Theme\ sub-folders.