https://thelazyadmin.com/blogs/thelazyadmin/archive/2005/03/21/Custom-Branding-Outlook-Web-Access.aspx
Outlook Web Access (OWA) in Exchange Server 2003 introduced the concept of themes. The ability for a user to change the theme, or the administrator to assign a scheme also made possible the ability to create a custom theme to match your corporate colors.
Users can select one of the five default themes from within OWA by click on Options and then scrolling down to Appearances.
First lets take a look at where the themes are located and what files makeup a theme. On your Exchange 2003 server, open up Explorer and browse to Program Files\Exchsrvr\exchweb\themes. Each folder 0-4, contain one of the included themes. To create a new theme create a folder and give it a name. A theme consists of a CSS Stylesheet and a number of GIFs for the logos, sidebars and buttons. I have created a new folder called "TLA" and I have copied the contents of folder 0 to my new TLA folder.
Before we begin customizing our theme we need to register it. Open up regedit and drill down to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeWEB\OWA
Create a new key called themes and under this key create a new REG-SZ string called TLA (or whatever name you gave the folder you created). The new strings value should be entered as:
id=100;title=TLA;bgcolor=#000000;path=TLA
- id is a custom ID number and must be different for each theme
- title is the title of the theme that will appear in the selection list in OWA
- bgcolor is the background color of the page
- path is the path to the theme (program files\exchsrvr\exchweb\themes is recognized as the root folder)
We can now reload OWA and see that the theme is in the list and working. Remember we copied the theme from the default folder so it will look the same, for now
All the GIF's and the CSS stylesheet are located in the TLA folder I created and these are the only files that need to be customized. There is a link to a color map for the default blue theme to help you decode the CSS stylesheet and here are the definitions for the two major GIF files.
- Logo.gif is a 410 x 319 pixel background image that appears in the background of the inbox.
- Logo2.gif is a 179 x 36 pixel logo in the top left corner of OWA.
The default is a Microsoft Outlook Web Access logo, replace this file with your company logo. Edit the CSS file to match your organizations color schemes and replace the logo.gif and logo2.gif with corporate logos. Open up OWA and re-load your newly created theme.
You can assign a theme to all your users by adding a DefaultTheme REG_DWORD registry value (Decimal 0 to 4) under:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeWEB\OWA
This will give all users the same theme and they will not have the ability to change it. You cannot assign a custom theme however you can overwrite one of the default themes in one of the default theme folders (0 to 4) and set a custom theme that way. Be careful as Service Packs could update these files. Keep a backup of your theme handy!
For more information see:
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