I end up writing a lot of Word documents, but after a while it gets very hard
to look at the white screen with black text. Is there any way to change the
default background color to black so that every new document that I create
will have that color without setting it everytime in the FormatBackground
menu selection? I have tried taking the Normal.dot and changing the
background on that to black with white text. White text stays, black
background does not.

It's time you bought a better monitor - or adjusted the one you have
correctly.
In the meantime you may find tools options general blue background
with white text preferable - at least Word will not attempt to print that!

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

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


Cory wrote:
I end up writing a lot of Word documents, but after a while it gets
very hard to look at the white screen with black text. Is there any
way to change the default background color to black so that every new
document that I create will have that color without setting it
everytime in the FormatBackground menu selection? I have tried
taking the Normal.dot and changing the background on that to black
with white text. White text stays, black background does not.

Control Panel - Display - Appearance - Advanced - Window
You can set background color there, but it will apply to *all* applications,
not only Word.
--
Ted