Can I run Word 2003 with Office 2007?

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

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

See http://www.gmayor.com/Toolbars_in_word_2007.htm which explains how to
configure Windows to allow both to work at the same time.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

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


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

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.

--
DCH


"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

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

It occurred to me that one way to reduce the tedium to almost nothing is to
code a macro which will enumerate the document styles, obtain the Font object
from each, and set the font color to white. That would mean a very simple
document creation process consisting of selecting a template, changing the
background color on the Page Layout tab to blue, and running the macro to
change the fonts to white.

This may have an effect on the use of themes but given the very specific
color combination which you want, you may not care.

As a long-time C/C++/C# person (too long!) I don't do VBA but it might be an
interesting little project that shouldn't take a VBA person too long. Perhaps
one of the forum's heavyweights can code one up for you - Beth, Graham, Herb,
and others...any volunteers?

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

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

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

It sounds like you're very close to what you want except for the highlighting
problem. I had a chance to look at the possible solution of changing system
colors which I mentioned in a previous note. Restating the current difficulty
is probably a good way to start:

Problem:
======
When the page background is blue, the gray selection or highlight rectangle
is difficult to see.


Changing the System Colors (XP Pro OS):
===========================
The system colors are settable to reflect individual preferences and to help
people with vision difficulties; at least that was the intent. I set two
system colors using the Control Panel which allows changes to a subset of the
settable colors: windows and window text were set to blue and white,
respectively. Word 2007 does pay attention to the system colors: default page
backgrounds were now a deep blue and the default font was white. However, the
default color of other style fonts was not white: on my machine, the Heading
1 font was red. So, while Word is making some adjustments to reflect the
system colors, the result may not be what you want without further changes to
font colors. Additionally, there was no effect on the selection problem:
selections were still highlighted by putting the selection inside a gray box
which is not easy to see on a blue page.

Changing the system colors had other side effects, including some very
interesting ones: looking at Outlook and Internet Explorer, it's obvious that
some programmers were checking the system colors and others were not. The
Dates Received column, for instance, is pure white in Outlook while the
lettering in other areas remains black. Internet Explorer did the right thing
in some ways: a successful find encloses the located word in a white
selection box which stands out nicely on a blue field but other areas were
improperly colored. I could go on but it's clear that current software
offerings from MS are not being sufficiently tested to see if they gracefully
handle changes in the system colors so this may not be a good solution for
you overall.

Programming:
=========
I did a quick look around at some of the Word objects and didn't see any
obvious way to tell Word how to display a selected or highlighted area. The
problem is not a simple one in the general case since color backgrounds can
vary quite a bit in different sections of a document. In your case, however,
the background and the font colors seem to be constant so a programming
solution might be possible if Word or Office doesn't provide a simpler way.
I'll take a further look to get a better handle on the problem and will get
back to you.

Ed McElroy

"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

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