How to use custom page templates in a theme that hides page template option?

Question

My client uses a theme called "Imbalance2", which hides the template option in dashboard "page attributes" section. Is there a way to assign a custom template to a page despite this - rather irritating - limitation imposed by the theme?

Answer 1

It could have been disabled in the "screen options" dropdown at the top of the page.

But, if it hasn't, and you need to only affect one page, then you can use the naming convention of "page-(ID).php" or "page-(slug).php" outlined here, however this can cause frustration if you try to change a template after the fact, so please use with caution.

Answer 2

I do not see a reason why the theme would do such a thing. Why would a theme cut down on features.

To double check it, make sure the page attributes in the screen options is checked.

Apart from that you can always set a page template using code.

_wp_page_template is the meta key which stores the page template.

You can update the page template using update_post_meta

Like

$post_id = 'the id of the post/page';
$template = 'name of the template';    

update_post_meta( $post_id, '_wp_page_template', $template );