Can I run Word 2003 with Office 2007?

[Jay Freedman]

In truth, MS Marketing has very little to do with the MVP program.
Microsoft's internal organization that deals directly with MVPs is
within the Product Support division. We've had several episodes in
which Marketing tried to get us to be evangelists, and we've resisted
vigorously. And I have, in fact, occasionally recommended OpenOffice,
usually when a poster indicates that cost is a major factor in their
selection.

While we do have some communication with the product developers, our
input on what to add, keep, or drop from the products is only one of a
great many sources -- more than I would care to have to satisfy.

When you hear that an existing feature is "low usage", the usual
source of that information is the Customer Experience Improvement
Program (http://www.microsoft.com/products/ceip/EN-US/default.mspx).
Internally, MS calls this the Software Quality Metrics (SQM). It's a
phone-home monitor that tells MS what features you use. Unfortunately,
a lot of people (especially in corporations) turn it off, either to
minimize network traffic or because of security concerns. That makes
the overall data somewhat suspect, but the relative frequencies should
be fairly trustworthy.

I think Suzanne hinted at something else with the ring of truth. The
white-on-blue display was introduced in Word 6.0 as part of the
"WordPerfect-killer" push (that was also the version with an Easter
egg that showed the green WP monster being crushed by Word icons).
That battle is now so far in the past that MS probably doesn't see any
reason to keep its relicts. If Word 2007 manages to annoy or outrage
enough of its users, though, there may be a new battle on the horizon.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

 

[Dan Freeman]

Actually, the genesis of the idea came from "Calvin's List". It's a long
story, but Calvin was a well-known programmer in the Foxpro community. He
later joined MSFT and became the lead developer on Visual Foxpro. He is now
working on VB.NET.

Dan

 

[Guest]

I'm greatly indebted to both you and Dan Freeman for the information.
Unfortunately, no one qualified for the free lobster lunch but my guess is
that real MVPs would rather hang out with the developers who eat at
McDonald's anyway.

I fear we're getting away from DCH's problem but the exchange has certainly
been elightening for me and I'm sure for others.

Thank you very much for the input.

Ed McElroy

 

[Dan Freeman]

At TechEd in 1997, one of the evening events divided the hall into four
quadrants, each with a specialization and each with "cuisine" all its own.

The Office quadrant got sushi. The Back Office quadrant got an elaborate
Italian buffet. What did developers get? WHITE CASTLE! <g>

Dan

 

[Graham Mayor]

Personally I would rather go hungry than eat anything from McDonalds I
also do what I do in spite of Microsoft rather than because of them. I
suspect the company gets far more out of the program than it puts into it.

--
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>
Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>

 

[Guest]

Hi DCH:

I promised to get back to you after taking a longer look at the problems of
trying to implement white font on a blue screen in Word 2007. Here are my
thoughts based on the experiments I've done and my current knowledge of Word
2007:

CHANGING ALL FONT COLORS:
=========================
I took a look at setting the font color of all styles en masse and came up
with a short macro to do this (it's not hard - the code is listed below).
After running the macro, text was white in the standard styles (those
displayed in the Styles pane at the beginning of a new document), and the
text color wasn't affected by themes. I inserted some "smart art" diagrams
(where do they get those names?) and the diagram text was also white.

As I discuss below, there was at least one surprise and, of course, there
are likely to be others since I didn't test every single feature in Word (I'm
far from knowing what all the features are, anyway). There are also objects
that have to be colored white such as the lines of tables. That isn't part of
the code but can be added.

CHANGING THE SELECTION HIGHLIGHT:
=================================
I have not found a way to tell Word to change the highlight colors. Can it
be done? Well, it can be simulated by actually altering the document when a
selection is made and restoring it when the selection is not. This is doable
with the Selection object. However, this is not a trivial matter since there
are many types of objects that can be selected, and highlighting appropriate
for text may not be appropriate for other objects. Additionally, a fair
amount of bulletproofing code must be added to make sure that changes to the
document as part of the selection highlight process are not permanent if
there should be a crash. I don't want to bother you with a lot of detail but,
while this might be possible, it could be a time-consuming task to do it
properly, not only in code development but especially in testing.

CONCLUSION:
===========
Those familiar with the Word programming SDKs may know better ways to try to
solve this problem. From what I currently know, even if it were possible to
get Word 2007 to emulate a white on blue screen, it will take time and carry
some initial risk. Your best approach in the short term, and quite possibly
the long term, is the one you decided on initially: go back to Word 2003.
It's a painless solution and the functionality you want is supported by MS
and will work without surprises.

CODE TO CHANGE STYLE FONT COLOR EN MASSE:
=========================================
For those who are interested, here is a simple macro which enumerates the
styles and changes their font color. I counted 265 built-in styles, only a
small subset of which have symbols defined. Touching one particular style,
the one whose name is "Article / Section" had a very unusual side effect: it
added numbered list characteristics to the various Heading styles. Hence,
there is code here to simply avoid it. I'm not sure when this style comes
into play or what the implication is of not setting its color.

I found that setting only the Color property was not enough since some of
the "emphasis" styles continued to go their own way. Changing the ColorIndex
property solved that. There is another color property, ColorIndexBI, which I
did not set since the brief documentation for the property indicates that
it's for right to left languages. If this is relevant, it should also be set.

Here is the macro:

Sub WhiteFont()
Dim CurStyle As Style
Dim CurDoc As Document

Set CurDoc = ActiveDocument

For CurIndex = 1 To CurDoc.Styles.Count Step 1
Set CurStyle = CurDoc.Styles(CurIndex)
If CurStyle.NameLocal <> "Article / Section" Then
CurStyle.Font.Color = wdColorWhite
CurStyle.Font.ColorIndex = wdWhite
End If
Next
End Sub

Of course, this can be improved for those who want to experiment:

1. If there is no ActiveDocument, the procedure should exit.
2. An up front dialog box can be added to allow the user to select the color.
3. VBA has a simple Collection object which can be used to store the initial
colors. This can provide the basis of a Restore function to put the initial
colors back.

If anybody does any experiments along these lines I'd be curious to hear
what your results are.

Ed McElroy

 

[Beth Melton]

Wouldn't it be easier to just use the Automatic font color and set the Page
Color on the Print Layout tab to a dark color?

If you use the Automatic font color then Word will automatically swap the
darker and lighter colors for you. It will also swap the colors when you
print since the page color isn't automatically printed.

To try this:
- Create a new document
- On the first line type: =rand() and press Enter (this should provide you
with some dummy text)
- On the Print Layout tab, click Page Color and point to a dark color. Live
Preview should show you the automatic change once you select a color that is
dark enough.
- Select the color and then switch to Print Preview

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email cannot be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Coauthor of Word 2007 Inside Out:
http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/9801.aspx#AboutTheBook

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[Guest]

I'm sure DCH would appreciate something easier!

I'm not following this completely. Here's what I'm seeing: I press the Print
Layout button at the bottom (I don't see a Print Layout tab - am I missing
something?); I do a rand() and black text appears on the white background; I
pick Page Color as blue on the Page Layout tab; the result is still black
text on a blue background. Clicking in a random paragraph indicates that the
font color is set to Automatic which is black.

What do I have to change in my sequence of steps?

Incidentally, my experiments playing around with the font colors has
resulted in a selection shading color which is a noticeably darker gray than
it was before. Hopefully it will get back to normal after a reboot....

Ed McElroy

 

[Guest]

I did some more experiments and I think I'm closer to what you were
describing. I set the page color to Blue using the Page Color button on the
Page Layout tab; on the Home Tab in the Font group I use the Font color
button to set the automatic color to white; I enter =rand() and the font is
white.

Fonts such has the heading fonts or Subtle Emphasis are unaffected but if
they're selected first in the Styles pane, and the Font button (same
location) is pressed again (I assume it's still showing white on everyone
else's machine), subsequent typing in the style is white.

Another approach is to simply type and let the color come out at will.
Selecting the entire document and using the Font button again can turn the
fonts white. Of course, this is not likely to be satisfactory to DCH or
others because they want to see white font as they type.

Such things as table lines aren't affected but they can be set using the
Borders and Shading button on the Table Properties dialog box.

Unfortunately, a key requirement for DCH is unaffected since the selection
shading is still dark gray.

Overall, this approach is likely to be less risky than running a macro to go
against all the styles but there will be some extra mouse clicks involved at
least in what I've outlined above. Is there any way to reduce the number of
mouse clicks?

E McElroy

 

[Beth Melton]

Sorry, that should have been Page Layout tab, not Print Layout. (Too many
"Layouts"!)

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email cannot be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Coauthor of Word 2007 Inside Out:
http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/9801.aspx#AboutTheBook

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[Beth Melton]

You shouldn't need to change the font color at all unless you aren't using
the Automatic font color, which is typically black if using the default
colors. All you should need to do is change the Page Color on the *Page*
Layout tab (not Print Layout - sorry!). Word will automatically take care of
the font color switching for you and the built-in styles should switch too.

Now, if your Windows Display properties already uses a dark window
background and light text then your results will be skewed. It sounds as
though this might be the case since you indicated your Automatic font color
was white.

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email cannot be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Coauthor of Word 2007 Inside Out:
http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/9801.aspx#AboutTheBook

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[Guest]

I have to set the automatic font color to white because if I don't, then the
=rand() text will be black. With the automatic color now set to white, it
still doesn't affect the styles which use a colored font. The automatic color
must be set again after selecting one in the Styles pane, and before typing.

Are you getting all white font, even on the Heading and emphasis styles
without doing anything? That's interesting because DCH mentioned that he had
been successful in most everything except the selection shading by putting
the page background button on the QA toolbar.

Perhaps I'll be able to figure out as I go along why I'm not getting similar
results.

Relating to the selection highlight difficulty that I reported (it was dark
gray), that turned out to be a leftover from the system color change
experiments I did. Restoring the system colors to their default brought back
the normal light blue highlighting (I'm using the blue motif). The only
difficulty I notice now is color fringing when selecting text in the formula
bar in Excel. Selecting text in cells, I get the usual black background with
white font. I don't recall seeing color fringing in the formula bar before
but I don't know if it's related to the wholesale style manipulations.

E McElroy

 

[Beth Melton]

You can't set the Automatic Font Color in Word. The Automatic Font Color is
the color assigned to Window Text in your Display Properties.

All I am doing is making sure that the font color in the Word document is
set to Automatic. (Mine happens to be a dark blue) and then I'm changing the
Page Color to a dark color - one that is dark enough for Word to
automatically swap the colors for me, including the Styles.

Perhaps you aren't using the Automatic font color? Word uses this color by
default but if you changed it then that might explain why you are having
difficult. To use the Automatic font color, on the Home tab, in the Font
group, click Font Color and then click Automatic at the top of the color
palette.

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email cannot be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Coauthor of Word 2007 Inside Out:
http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/9801.aspx#AboutTheBook

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[Guest]

Thanks. Let me cover these individually and see where I'm at:

1. My window text system color is currently set to black.

2. By "setting the Automatic Font Color" I meant setting the color with the
font button. I see after a redisplay that the Automatic Font Color stays at
black and my description is an abuse of the language.

3. From what you said, making "...sure that the font color in the Word
document is
set to Automatic" is simply a matter of showing the Font button pallette and
clicking on the color box beside the word "Automatic".

Well, I did another experiment, first clicking on the Automatic color box;
then I did =rand() and got some text; and then I set the page background.
With a blue background, the font stayed black but I decided to run over the
other colors in a preview and interestingly enough, when the page background
color is black or near black, the font changed color to white. My initial
hunch is that black font on a blue background is considered readably distinct
(by whatever algorithm the code uses) and therefore there is no font switch.
Hunch two is that you may be getting a change on a blue background because
your system color text font is not black but blue.

I'll try changing my system text color and get back to you.

Ed McElroy

 

[Guest]

I changed the font color of window text to be a darkish blue and tried
another experiment. I made sure to click the Automatic color box in the Font
button palette before proceeding. Again there was no change in font color on
the bright blue background that I've been using (I use the bright blue in the
row of standard colors). However, going to a dark blue background or black
background, the font changed to white.

Using that very handy preview feature to check out the various backgrounds,
it apparently is not so much the similarity between the font color and the
background color which triggers the change since I had background colors
which were a close match to the font color but there was no change and the
font was barely readable. However, on that last row of very dark background
colors, the font changed readily to white on several of them.

In the standard styles that display with a new document, the majority seem
to have a specific color specified and there was no change in that color. The
Intense Emphasis style is still red, for example, and the Title font color
was very close to the dark blue background it was on but Word didn't change
it. But those fonts, and there were several, that didn't have a specific
color specified all came out white.

I don't know if DCH was looking for all white fonts or whether he was happy
with having some of the fonts retain their original color. Of course, any
particular color can always be changed.

Something tells me that I learned more than anyone else on this particular
thread. The automatic color information you provided was informative and
interesting.

Thanks very much for the input.

Ed McElroy

 

[Beth Melton]

I'm glad you got it figured out. Yes, if you were trying to use a light
blue then the colors wouldn't swap. As previously noted, you need use a dark
color. Regarding your styles, yes, if you have defined a color other than
Automatic then it will stay that color.

Now there is another way to do this using Style Sets, one could create a
Style Set to be used for a dark background and one for a light background
and then simply swap them as needed. But this one is a little more involved.

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email cannot be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Coauthor of Word 2007 Inside Out:
http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/9801.aspx#AboutTheBook

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[Guest]

Or you can always use the "Print entire document" feature on your printer. If
it's a color printer, It will print out the background as well. Just check
out print preview BEFORE you print.

 

[cjb]

Regarding "You REALLY should MOVE on..." This is the second such reply I've
received (the first to a similar question). Let me just say that not every
one enjoys the healthy eyesight you obviously enjoy.