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
Beth Melton" wrote:
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/boo...x#AboutTheBook
Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/
"E McElroy" wrote in message
...
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" wrote:
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.
"E McElroy" wrote in message
...
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" wrote:
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/boo...x#AboutTheBook
Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/
"E McElroy" wrote in message
...
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