Can I run Word 2003 with Office 2007?

You know, this attitude really amazes me. I, as a user of software
applications specifically and a consumer in general, get really annoyed when
other people think they know better what I want than I do. In addition to
being a consumer I have been a software developer for over 20 years and one
rule I have always tried to follow is: Give people what they want. If you
don't, they will go elsewhere. Another one is this: don't ever take
function away once it is there.

As for your "move on" comment. I have applications that are 15 years old
that I still use. Why? because they were done well, they work, and they
help me do my job. In short, they are useful to me and to be selfish that's
all that matters. If this white on blue configuration is useful and
desireable for DCH then that is all that matters.

There's one more saying we like here in New England: "If it ain't broke,
don't fix it."
Apologies to my 5th. grade grammar teacher :-)


"Summer" wrote:

You REALLY should MOVE on - the same way research does!

Regardless you can run both versions 2003/2007 - you can make 2003 the
default Word program to open also.

"DCH" wrote in message
...
The deletion of the blue background/white text option in Word 2007 is
sending
me back to Word 2003. Can I uninstall Word 2007 and re-install Word 2003
while retaining the rest of Office 2007? And if so, can you tell me how?

Many thanks for whatever suggestions anyone may have,

DCH

If you use blue paper, you will still get an apparently blank page. Word can
print "white" text only by knocking it out of a colored background (unless
you have a printer in which you can substitute a white cartridge for the
black one and use "Auto" font color).

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"E McElroy" wrote in message
...
When I do a print preview, I get a white sheet which indicates that the
white
font is being preserved but not the blue background. Since I do mostly
programming, I don't have a color printer so I was uncertain whether this
was
a limitation caused by my printer. Since you brought this up, however, I
would guess that you must be seeing a similar result on your print
preview.

Well, it's easy enough to check for someone with a color printer but
whether
the blue background is preserved or not, my guess is that it's more
economical to purchase blue paper than to color white sheets blue with a
printer.

E McElroy

"Graham Mayor" wrote:

Have you tried printing a document with these formatting suggestions?


--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org


DCH wrote:
Thank you thank you for taking the time to explain all this, McElroy.
Some of it is over my head but I have worked out a partial (though
not very elegant) solution: I put the "Page Background" icon on the
Quick Access Toolbar. Creating a new document, I click on the Page
Background icon and choose dark blue and the text automatically comes
up white. Perfect. It requires three clicks to get a new
blue-background/white text page for every new document but I can live
with that. The major problem is that "found" text (text found by the
"Find and Replace" function) is highlighted in either dark gray or
black, which is almost impossible to find against the dark blue
background. If "found" text were highlighted in almost any other
color, such that I could see it against the blue background, I would
be a happy man ("over the moon" as my daughter says). Is it possible
to change the color of "found" text? Thank you again for your time
and help McElroy.

DCH


"E McElroy" wrote:

There is a way to get white text on a blue background in Word 2007
by using the following recipe:

1. In the Page Backround group of the Page Layout tab, click Page
Color and select a shade of blue - this is the blue background.

2. Type a line of text and then place the insertion point inside a
word of text.

3. Right click on the selected text and choose Font from the menu.

4. On the Font dialog box select white in the Font Color drop down
list box. The word containing the insertion point will turn white.

5. Without moving the insertion point, right click again and choose
Styles from the context menu. This displays a submenu.

6. From the submenu choose Save Selection As A New Quick Style. This
displays the Create New Style From Formatting dialog box.

7. In the Create New Style From Formatting dialog box, enter the
name of the Style. If you used say, the "Heading 1" style for the
text, then you might want to call it "White Font Heading 1".

You can alter steps 6 and 7 to change the existing style to have
white font - choose Update Heading 1 To Match Selection in step 6.

You can see there is a bit of tedium initially: for every style of
font you use, at the beginning you will need to create a white font
version of it or change it to use white font. However, most
documents aren't likely to use a huge number of styles and over time
you'll have a big collection which you can store in your normal
template file. In fact, a good start might be to edit the normal
template file and simply change all the styles to use white font.

Perhaps some other folks here can suggest ways to reduce the initial
tedium by utilizing themes or some other technique.

Some time ago, I believe Word took it's cue from the setting of the
system colors for window and window text. Whether that's true now in
2007 with themes I don't know. One of the major goals behind the
implementation of system color and font settings was to help people
with less than optimal vision to use Windows. This would be worth
exploring if the above approach is unsuitable or excessively tedious.

E McElroy

The deletion of the blue background/white text option in Word 2007
is sending me back to Word 2003. Can I uninstall Word 2007 and
re-install Word 2003 while retaining the rest of Office 2007? And
if so, can you tell me how?

Many thanks for whatever suggestions anyone may have,

DCH

Although Microsoft does generally have a commitment to keeping older
features for compatibility with older versions (and the reasons for this
were explained to us MVPs whenever we suggested removing the troublesome WP
options), Word 2007 was designed "from the ground up," and a lot of the
decisions were based on "popularity" or "majority rule." Apparently surveys
showed that such a very tiny population actually used "Blue background,
white text" that a relatively small percentage would miss it. Of course,
even 0.1% of Word users is still thousands of users.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"W J Wyatt" W J wrote in message
...
You know, this attitude really amazes me. I, as a user of software
applications specifically and a consumer in general, get really annoyed
when
other people think they know better what I want than I do. In addition to
being a consumer I have been a software developer for over 20 years and
one
rule I have always tried to follow is: Give people what they want. If
you
don't, they will go elsewhere. Another one is this: don't ever take
function away once it is there.

As for your "move on" comment. I have applications that are 15 years old
that I still use. Why? because they were done well, they work, and they
help me do my job. In short, they are useful to me and to be selfish
that's
all that matters. If this white on blue configuration is useful and
desireable for DCH then that is all that matters.

There's one more saying we like here in New England: "If it ain't broke,
don't fix it."
Apologies to my 5th. grade grammar teacher :-)


"Summer" wrote:

You REALLY should MOVE on - the same way research does!

Regardless you can run both versions 2003/2007 - you can make 2003 the
default Word program to open also.

"DCH" wrote in message
...
The deletion of the blue background/white text option in Word 2007 is
sending
me back to Word 2003. Can I uninstall Word 2007 and re-install Word
2003
while retaining the rest of Office 2007? And if so, can you tell me
how?

Many thanks for whatever suggestions anyone may have,

DCH

That's interesting, something I would never know with my non-color printer.
Of course, it may be that the blue background is intended only for display
purposes and is not the intended color of a printout. If it is intended for a
printout, in addition to the clever work-around you proposed, changing the
font colors to a bright yellow prior to printing and then back again to white
afterwards might be a reasonable substitute (yellow on blue was a favorite
back in the DOS era).

A macro would seem to be required to accomplish the font color changes
quickly. No one appears to be volunteering to write one in VBA although it
looks pretty straightforward to do so. If there no volunteers in another few
days, I will check out a VBA book and code one up (after coding it in C# or
C++ to make sure it works!).

E McElroy

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:

If you use blue paper, you will still get an apparently blank page. Word can
print "white" text only by knocking it out of a colored background (unless
you have a printer in which you can substitute a white cartridge for the
black one and use "Auto" font color).

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"E McElroy" wrote in message
...
When I do a print preview, I get a white sheet which indicates that the
white
font is being preserved but not the blue background. Since I do mostly
programming, I don't have a color printer so I was uncertain whether this
was
a limitation caused by my printer. Since you brought this up, however, I
would guess that you must be seeing a similar result on your print
preview.

Well, it's easy enough to check for someone with a color printer but
whether
the blue background is preserved or not, my guess is that it's more
economical to purchase blue paper than to color white sheets blue with a
printer.

E McElroy

"Graham Mayor" wrote:

Have you tried printing a document with these formatting suggestions?


--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org


DCH wrote:
Thank you thank you for taking the time to explain all this, McElroy.
Some of it is over my head but I have worked out a partial (though
not very elegant) solution: I put the "Page Background" icon on the
Quick Access Toolbar. Creating a new document, I click on the Page
Background icon and choose dark blue and the text automatically comes
up white. Perfect. It requires three clicks to get a new
blue-background/white text page for every new document but I can live
with that. The major problem is that "found" text (text found by the
"Find and Replace" function) is highlighted in either dark gray or
black, which is almost impossible to find against the dark blue
background. If "found" text were highlighted in almost any other
color, such that I could see it against the blue background, I would
be a happy man ("over the moon" as my daughter says). Is it possible
to change the color of "found" text? Thank you again for your time
and help McElroy.

DCH


"E McElroy" wrote:

There is a way to get white text on a blue background in Word 2007
by using the following recipe:

1. In the Page Backround group of the Page Layout tab, click Page
Color and select a shade of blue - this is the blue background.

2. Type a line of text and then place the insertion point inside a
word of text.

3. Right click on the selected text and choose Font from the menu.

4. On the Font dialog box select white in the Font Color drop down
list box. The word containing the insertion point will turn white.

5. Without moving the insertion point, right click again and choose
Styles from the context menu. This displays a submenu.

6. From the submenu choose Save Selection As A New Quick Style. This
displays the Create New Style From Formatting dialog box.

7. In the Create New Style From Formatting dialog box, enter the
name of the Style. If you used say, the "Heading 1" style for the
text, then you might want to call it "White Font Heading 1".

You can alter steps 6 and 7 to change the existing style to have
white font - choose Update Heading 1 To Match Selection in step 6.

You can see there is a bit of tedium initially: for every style of
font you use, at the beginning you will need to create a white font
version of it or change it to use white font. However, most
documents aren't likely to use a huge number of styles and over time
you'll have a big collection which you can store in your normal
template file. In fact, a good start might be to edit the normal
template file and simply change all the styles to use white font.

Perhaps some other folks here can suggest ways to reduce the initial
tedium by utilizing themes or some other technique.

Some time ago, I believe Word took it's cue from the setting of the
system colors for window and window text. Whether that's true now in
2007 with themes I don't know. One of the major goals behind the
implementation of system color and font settings was to help people
with less than optimal vision to use Windows. This would be worth
exploring if the above approach is unsuitable or excessively tedious.

E McElroy

The deletion of the blue background/white text option in Word 2007
is sending me back to Word 2003. Can I uninstall Word 2007 and
re-install Word 2003 while retaining the rest of Office 2007? And
if so, can you tell me how?

Many thanks for whatever suggestions anyone may have,

DCH

As unpaid (I assume) evangelists for Word, I'm sure Microsoft's Marketing
department would insist that MVPs be kept informed on major changes such as
this. It is certainly possible that the feature was dropped as a result of a
survey but, unless they specifically said that, it's also quite possible it
was a feature they didn't have time to add or it could have been simply an
oversight. This was, after all, a major change, and in major changes, some
things drop through the cracks. (.NET V1.0 had some famous early gaffes where
important functionality was simply forgotten but, in fairness, .NET V1.0 was
a project of enormous proportions, far greater, I'm sure, than a rewrite of
Word.)

All of which is to say, perhaps you can relay to Microsoft that the feature
is missed and maybe it will return in the next minor release for those who
need or want it.

E McElroy

"DCH" wrote:

The deletion of the blue background/white text option in Word 2007 is sending
me back to Word 2003. Can I uninstall Word 2007 and re-install Word 2003
while retaining the rest of Office 2007? And if so, can you tell me how?

Many thanks for whatever suggestions anyone may have,

DCH

OOPS!

This was intended to be a response to Ms Barnhill's reply to W J Wyatt and
got misposted in this position by mistake. Sorry.

E McElroy


"E McElroy" wrote:

As unpaid (I assume) evangelists for Word, I'm sure Microsoft's Marketing
department would insist that MVPs be kept informed on major changes such as
this. It is certainly possible that the feature was dropped as a result of a
survey but, unless they specifically said that, it's also quite possible it
was a feature they didn't have time to add or it could have been simply an
oversight. This was, after all, a major change, and in major changes, some
things drop through the cracks. (.NET V1.0 had some famous early gaffes where
important functionality was simply forgotten but, in fairness, .NET V1.0 was
a project of enormous proportions, far greater, I'm sure, than a rewrite of
Word.)

All of which is to say, perhaps you can relay to Microsoft that the feature
is missed and maybe it will return in the next minor release for those who
need or want it.

E McElroy

"DCH" wrote:

The deletion of the blue background/white text option in Word 2007 is sending
me back to Word 2003. Can I uninstall Word 2007 and re-install Word 2003
while retaining the rest of Office 2007? And if so, can you tell me how?

Many thanks for whatever suggestions anyone may have,

DCH

We are unpaid, but you will start a war if you call us evangelists. And
marketing has nothing to do with it; we talk to the developers of the
product and have some input into the product design. I can tell you that the
reason this feature was dropped was "lack of use." I don't know that I heard
this directly viva voce from the product group, though; I would have thought
it was in Jensen Harris's Office UI blog, but a search doesn't turn it up
there.

I did find
http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office....mspx?mfr=true,
which says that AutoSummarize was "a low-use feature." About BBWT, it just
says, "This feature, included in previous versions of Word to emulate legacy
versions of WordPerfect, is no longer used." Maybe they just got tired of
accommodating WP migrants?

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"E McElroy" wrote in message
...
As unpaid (I assume) evangelists for Word, I'm sure Microsoft's Marketing
department would insist that MVPs be kept informed on major changes such
as
this. It is certainly possible that the feature was dropped as a result of
a
survey but, unless they specifically said that, it's also quite possible
it
was a feature they didn't have time to add or it could have been simply an
oversight. This was, after all, a major change, and in major changes, some
things drop through the cracks. (.NET V1.0 had some famous early gaffes
where
important functionality was simply forgotten but, in fairness, .NET V1.0
was
a project of enormous proportions, far greater, I'm sure, than a rewrite
of
Word.)

All of which is to say, perhaps you can relay to Microsoft that the
feature
is missed and maybe it will return in the next minor release for those who
need or want it.

E McElroy

"DCH" wrote:

The deletion of the blue background/white text option in Word 2007 is
sending
me back to Word 2003. Can I uninstall Word 2007 and re-install Word
2003
while retaining the rest of Office 2007? And if so, can you tell me
how?

Many thanks for whatever suggestions anyone may have,

DCH

Well I certainly don't want to start a war since I don't run as fast as I
used to. I do suspect, however, that Microsoft's Marketing department almost
certainly regards MVPs as evangelists and may well run more interference for
you in the corporate bureaucracy than you might be aware of. Who, for
instance, initially came up with the MVP concept? Microsoft's programmers?
I'm skeptical but I'm willing to be persuaded. There's nothing wrong with
Marketing department support. After all, you're very valuable to Microsoft
and their Marketing people are surely aware of that. I wonder, for instance,
how often Office MVPs recommend OpenOffice to their clients; and you do a
great job providing support for the products in these forums - you're all
saving Mr. Gates the salaries of a lot of support people he would otherwise
have to hire.

I appreciate the information and the insight. In past versions, this feature
might have been easier to implement than it is in the current version because
of themes and other features. I noticed when I changed the system colors that
themes were still going their own way. Perhaps the additional amount of work
required was not justified although people with vision problems such as DCH
appear to have been short-changed in the process.

E McElroy

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:

We are unpaid, but you will start a war if you call us evangelists. And
marketing has nothing to do with it; we talk to the developers of the
product and have some input into the product design. I can tell you that the
reason this feature was dropped was "lack of use." I don't know that I heard
this directly viva voce from the product group, though; I would have thought
it was in Jensen Harris's Office UI blog, but a search doesn't turn it up
there.

I did find
http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office....mspx?mfr=true,
which says that AutoSummarize was "a low-use feature." About BBWT, it just
says, "This feature, included in previous versions of Word to emulate legacy
versions of WordPerfect, is no longer used." Maybe they just got tired of
accommodating WP migrants?

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"E McElroy" wrote in message
...
As unpaid (I assume) evangelists for Word, I'm sure Microsoft's Marketing
department would insist that MVPs be kept informed on major changes such
as
this. It is certainly possible that the feature was dropped as a result of
a
survey but, unless they specifically said that, it's also quite possible
it
was a feature they didn't have time to add or it could have been simply an
oversight. This was, after all, a major change, and in major changes, some
things drop through the cracks. (.NET V1.0 had some famous early gaffes
where
important functionality was simply forgotten but, in fairness, .NET V1.0
was
a project of enormous proportions, far greater, I'm sure, than a rewrite
of
Word.)

All of which is to say, perhaps you can relay to Microsoft that the
feature
is missed and maybe it will return in the next minor release for those who
need or want it.

E McElroy

"DCH" wrote:

The deletion of the blue background/white text option in Word 2007 is
sending
me back to Word 2003. Can I uninstall Word 2007 and re-install Word
2003
while retaining the rest of Office 2007? And if so, can you tell me
how?

Many thanks for whatever suggestions anyone may have,

DCH

E McElroy wrote:
Well I certainly don't want to start a war since I don't run as fast
as I used to. I do suspect, however, that Microsoft's Marketing
department almost certainly regards MVPs as evangelists and may well
run more interference for you in the corporate bureaucracy than you
might be aware of. Who, for instance, initially came up with the MVP
concept? Microsoft's programmers? I'm skeptical but I'm willing to be
persuaded.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

The MVP program originated in the Developer Division. It resides in Customer
Service and Support these days.

Dan

I'm truly amazed! Tell me at least that the idea came out of the office of an
Engineering Vice President who spends a lot of time in meetings with
Marketing and I'll buy you a lobster lunch the next time you're in the Boston
area.

E McElroy

"Dan Freeman" wrote:

E McElroy wrote:
Well I certainly don't want to start a war since I don't run as fast
as I used to. I do suspect, however, that Microsoft's Marketing
department almost certainly regards MVPs as evangelists and may well
run more interference for you in the corporate bureaucracy than you
might be aware of. Who, for instance, initially came up with the MVP
concept? Microsoft's programmers? I'm skeptical but I'm willing to be
persuaded.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

The MVP program originated in the Developer Division. It resides in Customer
Service and Support these days.

Dan