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#1
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Can I customize the colors available in Track Changes?
I have a colleague who customarily does all pen-and-paper editing in a
"signature" color that is not among the Track Changes color options. Is it possible to change the available palette? Thanks. |
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#2
Posted to microsoft.public.word.docmanagement
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Can I customize the colors available in Track Changes?
No, the colors offered are the only ones available for this feature. A
custom color could be applied to the text, but this would be direct font formatting. -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA http://word.mvps.org "comolake" wrote in message ... I have a colleague who customarily does all pen-and-paper editing in a "signature" color that is not among the Track Changes color options. Is it possible to change the available palette? Thanks. |
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#3
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Can I customize the colors available in Track Changes?
Thank you for the speedy reply!
I suspected this would be the case. One followup question - Is it the kind of thing that could be modified by a programmer working on the source code, by any chance? "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote: No, the colors offered are the only ones available for this feature. A custom color could be applied to the text, but this would be direct font formatting. -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA http://word.mvps.org "comolake" wrote in message ... I have a colleague who customarily does all pen-and-paper editing in a "signature" color that is not among the Track Changes color options. Is it possible to change the available palette? Thanks. |
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#4
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Can I customize the colors available in Track Changes?
Technically, a programmer working on the source code could do anything. However,
considering that the source code of Word is proprietary to Microsoft, the question is meaningless. The controlling consideration is whether the managers of the Office division would think it worth the time and expense to make the change, ensure that it's backwardly compatible with older versions, test that it works in all the various languages, and adequately test it; and balance that expense against whatever additional revenue that could be expected because of the change. The phrase "a snowball's chance" comes to mind. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. On Sun, 4 Jan 2009 17:03:02 -0800, comolake wrote: Thank you for the speedy reply! I suspected this would be the case. One followup question - Is it the kind of thing that could be modified by a programmer working on the source code, by any chance? "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote: No, the colors offered are the only ones available for this feature. A custom color could be applied to the text, but this would be direct font formatting. -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA http://word.mvps.org "comolake" wrote in message ... I have a colleague who customarily does all pen-and-paper editing in a "signature" color that is not among the Track Changes color options. Is it possible to change the available palette? Thanks. |
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#5
Posted to microsoft.public.word.docmanagement
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Can I customize the colors available in Track Changes?
Now that I think about it I don't know what I was thinking! I'd had it in my
head that it was possible for some techy person to get into the source code and tinker, but I've just had a big V-8 moment. :-) Thanks for answering. "Jay Freedman" wrote: Technically, a programmer working on the source code could do anything. However, considering that the source code of Word is proprietary to Microsoft, the question is meaningless. The controlling consideration is whether the managers of the Office division would think it worth the time and expense to make the change, ensure that it's backwardly compatible with older versions, test that it works in all the various languages, and adequately test it; and balance that expense against whatever additional revenue that could be expected because of the change. The phrase "a snowball's chance" comes to mind. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. |
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#6
Posted to microsoft.public.word.docmanagement
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Can I customize the colors available in Track Changes?
Mr. Freedman, I have the same question. In Word 2007 the font color palette
is just awful. I have documents with black text but want to be able to choose a different color for an occasional word here and there. I want the same color that a hyperlink is (RGB 0-0-255) but that color is not available on the Word 2007 font color pallette. When I add that particular color to the palette, it is gone again when I log off and back on again. I got a snippy suggestion from Suzanne Barnhill to use Styles, but I don't see how styles would apply to changing the color of an occasional word here and there in a document. I found themes, but have discovered that a new theme can only be chosen for a new document, I cannot change to a different theme with preferred font colors in an existing document. Can you please pass on a request to the powers that be at Microsoft to stop limiting what we can do in Word and stop making such drastic changes with every new incarnation of Word? They are not making it better, they are making it worse -- and less and less user friendly. They seem to have no idea what end users actually use the program for. In Word 2007 they have also taken away the ability to use Shift F-5 to find the most recently edited spot in a document, so now I have to hunt and seek for the place I left off editing several days and several documents ago. How is this better? And whoever chose those colors for the font color pallette in Word 2007 should be fired. I'm sorry if I sound snippy -- I don't mean to, I know it's nothing you have done or have control over. "Jay Freedman" wrote: Technically, a programmer working on the source code could do anything. However, considering that the source code of Word is proprietary to Microsoft, the question is meaningless. The controlling consideration is whether the managers of the Office division would think it worth the time and expense to make the change, ensure that it's backwardly compatible with older versions, test that it works in all the various languages, and adequately test it; and balance that expense against whatever additional revenue that could be expected because of the change. The phrase "a snowball's chance" comes to mind. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. On Sun, 4 Jan 2009 17:03:02 -0800, comolake wrote: Thank you for the speedy reply! I suspected this would be the case. One followup question - Is it the kind of thing that could be modified by a programmer working on the source code, by any chance? "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote: No, the colors offered are the only ones available for this feature. A custom color could be applied to the text, but this would be direct font formatting. -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA http://word.mvps.org "comolake" wrote in message ... I have a colleague who customarily does all pen-and-paper editing in a "signature" color that is not among the Track Changes color options. Is it possible to change the available palette? Thanks. |
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#7
Posted to microsoft.public.word.docmanagement
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Can I customize the colors available in Track Changes?
Hi Crystal,
While I sympathize with your frustrations, my answer is going to be quite similar to Suzanne's -- the only way to store a custom font color between Word sessions is to create a character style that includes that color, and apply that style to each word or phrase that needs it. A character style can include any font formatting you want; for example, the built-in character style named Emphasis merely applies italic formatting to whatever is selected. Similarly, you can define a character style named Blue and make it include just the pure blue color. I don't know why the blue in the palette isn't RGB 0-0-255, but it's a PITA because you can't use "blue" as a search criterion in the Find dialog if you're dealing with a file from previous versions; the new blue doesn't match the old one. I suspect that the Office developers took their mandate to "make it easy to produce good-looking documents" too literally and enlisted some arty-designer types to give them a makeover. :-( There should be no reason you can't change the theme in an existing document whenever you want. What happens when you try? The Shift+F5 shortcut still works, but only during the current session. The problem here was a design oversight: there is no place in the new .docx format to store the built-in bookmark named \PrevSel1, which in previous versions was the place the first press of Shift+F5 would go. The MVPs told Microsoft about this during the Office 2007 beta, but it was apparently too late to get it fixed. I hope it's in the bug database to be fixed in the next version. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. Crystal wrote: Mr. Freedman, I have the same question. In Word 2007 the font color palette is just awful. I have documents with black text but want to be able to choose a different color for an occasional word here and there. I want the same color that a hyperlink is (RGB 0-0-255) but that color is not available on the Word 2007 font color pallette. When I add that particular color to the palette, it is gone again when I log off and back on again. I got a snippy suggestion from Suzanne Barnhill to use Styles, but I don't see how styles would apply to changing the color of an occasional word here and there in a document. I found themes, but have discovered that a new theme can only be chosen for a new document, I cannot change to a different theme with preferred font colors in an existing document. Can you please pass on a request to the powers that be at Microsoft to stop limiting what we can do in Word and stop making such drastic changes with every new incarnation of Word? They are not making it better, they are making it worse -- and less and less user friendly. They seem to have no idea what end users actually use the program for. In Word 2007 they have also taken away the ability to use Shift F-5 to find the most recently edited spot in a document, so now I have to hunt and seek for the place I left off editing several days and several documents ago. How is this better? And whoever chose those colors for the font color pallette in Word 2007 should be fired. I'm sorry if I sound snippy -- I don't mean to, I know it's nothing you have done or have control over. "Jay Freedman" wrote: Technically, a programmer working on the source code could do anything. However, considering that the source code of Word is proprietary to Microsoft, the question is meaningless. The controlling consideration is whether the managers of the Office division would think it worth the time and expense to make the change, ensure that it's backwardly compatible with older versions, test that it works in all the various languages, and adequately test it; and balance that expense against whatever additional revenue that could be expected because of the change. The phrase "a snowball's chance" comes to mind. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. On Sun, 4 Jan 2009 17:03:02 -0800, comolake wrote: Thank you for the speedy reply! I suspected this would be the case. One followup question - Is it the kind of thing that could be modified by a programmer working on the source code, by any chance? "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote: No, the colors offered are the only ones available for this feature. A custom color could be applied to the text, but this would be direct font formatting. -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA http://word.mvps.org "comolake" wrote in message ... I have a colleague who customarily does all pen-and-paper editing in a "signature" color that is not among the Track Changes color options. Is it possible to change the available palette? Thanks. |
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#8
Posted to microsoft.public.word.docmanagement
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Can I customize the colors available in Track Changes?
Mr. Freedman, thank you very much, I really appreciate such a complete and
gracious answer. Again, I apologize if I sound snippy, I don't mean to, but it is frustrating when one gets used to doing work a certain way and then all familiar options are yanked away and one must find totally new options that don't seem to work as well. I'm sorry, I don't understand what you meant in the paragraph about PITA, can you explain that a little further? When I try to choose a different Theme in an existing document, the option is grayed out and can't be selected. When I open a new blank document, the Theme option becomes available to be selected again. Is there a checkbox I need to change or something? Thank you for telling me about Shift F-5 working in a document that I haven't closed yet. That is helpful. Maybe I can just lock my computer at night and not close out of the documents I'm working on, but I think our system is taken offline during the night, which would prompt a reboot the next morning anyway. I try to remember to add my own bookmark before closing a document and can then Go To that bookmark but sometimes forget. I will try your suggestion to use Styles. However, just to add my 2¢, one of the many reasons I don't use Styles is because of having the style window open. You are probably a younger man with good vision, but I'm 52 and my eyesight is not what it once was. I refuse to have my screen resolution set to microscopic. I have a hard time seeing most of the dinky screens, such as this reply window, and have to enlarge them. Thanks heavens I found Control+Scroll! In Word 2007, if I have the ribbon open, ONE-THIRD of my screen is taken up. If I also have the style window, or clipboard window, or clipart window, etc., open, that's another big chunk of my document that I can't see. Also, as I told Suzanne Barnhill, I don't know of anyone who uses or likes Styles -- they are not user friendly and whenever I try to use one it makes unintended changes that I didn't want. I'm sure the programmers had good intentions with creating them but the only people I know of who are fans of styles are instructors -- not the people who have to apply them in the real world. "Jay Freedman" wrote: Hi Crystal, While I sympathize with your frustrations, my answer is going to be quite similar to Suzanne's -- the only way to store a custom font color between Word sessions is to create a character style that includes that color, and apply that style to each word or phrase that needs it. A character style can include any font formatting you want; for example, the built-in character style named Emphasis merely applies italic formatting to whatever is selected. Similarly, you can define a character style named Blue and make it include just the pure blue color. I don't know why the blue in the palette isn't RGB 0-0-255, but it's a PITA because you can't use "blue" as a search criterion in the Find dialog if you're dealing with a file from previous versions; the new blue doesn't match the old one. I suspect that the Office developers took their mandate to "make it easy to produce good-looking documents" too literally and enlisted some arty-designer types to give them a makeover. :-( There should be no reason you can't change the theme in an existing document whenever you want. What happens when you try? The Shift+F5 shortcut still works, but only during the current session. The problem here was a design oversight: there is no place in the new .docx format to store the built-in bookmark named \PrevSel1, which in previous versions was the place the first press of Shift+F5 would go. The MVPs told Microsoft about this during the Office 2007 beta, but it was apparently too late to get it fixed. I hope it's in the bug database to be fixed in the next version. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. Crystal wrote: Mr. Freedman, I have the same question. In Word 2007 the font color palette is just awful. I have documents with black text but want to be able to choose a different color for an occasional word here and there. I want the same color that a hyperlink is (RGB 0-0-255) but that color is not available on the Word 2007 font color pallette. When I add that particular color to the palette, it is gone again when I log off and back on again. I got a snippy suggestion from Suzanne Barnhill to use Styles, but I don't see how styles would apply to changing the color of an occasional word here and there in a document. I found themes, but have discovered that a new theme can only be chosen for a new document, I cannot change to a different theme with preferred font colors in an existing document. Can you please pass on a request to the powers that be at Microsoft to stop limiting what we can do in Word and stop making such drastic changes with every new incarnation of Word? They are not making it better, they are making it worse -- and less and less user friendly. They seem to have no idea what end users actually use the program for. In Word 2007 they have also taken away the ability to use Shift F-5 to find the most recently edited spot in a document, so now I have to hunt and seek for the place I left off editing several days and several documents ago. How is this better? And whoever chose those colors for the font color pallette in Word 2007 should be fired. I'm sorry if I sound snippy -- I don't mean to, I know it's nothing you have done or have control over. "Jay Freedman" wrote: Technically, a programmer working on the source code could do anything. However, considering that the source code of Word is proprietary to Microsoft, the question is meaningless. The controlling consideration is whether the managers of the Office division would think it worth the time and expense to make the change, ensure that it's backwardly compatible with older versions, test that it works in all the various languages, and adequately test it; and balance that expense against whatever additional revenue that could be expected because of the change. The phrase "a snowball's chance" comes to mind. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. On Sun, 4 Jan 2009 17:03:02 -0800, comolake wrote: Thank you for the speedy reply! I suspected this would be the case. One followup question - Is it the kind of thing that could be modified by a programmer working on the source code, by any chance? "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote: No, the colors offered are the only ones available for this feature. A custom color could be applied to the text, but this would be direct font formatting. -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA http://word.mvps.org "comolake" wrote in message ... I have a colleague who customarily does all pen-and-paper editing in a "signature" color that is not among the Track Changes color options. Is it possible to change the available palette? Thanks. |
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#9
Posted to microsoft.public.word.docmanagement
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Can I customize the colors available in Track Changes?
You don't have to have the Styles & Formatting task pane open to use styles.
You can add the Style dropdown to the QAT and use that. You could also assign a keyboard shortcut to your character style (in the same way that you can use Ctrl+B and Ctrl+I for bold and italic. For instructions on how to create a character style, see http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/StyleRef.htm -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA http://word.mvps.org "Crystal" wrote in message ... Mr. Freedman, thank you very much, I really appreciate such a complete and gracious answer. Again, I apologize if I sound snippy, I don't mean to, but it is frustrating when one gets used to doing work a certain way and then all familiar options are yanked away and one must find totally new options that don't seem to work as well. I'm sorry, I don't understand what you meant in the paragraph about PITA, can you explain that a little further? When I try to choose a different Theme in an existing document, the option is grayed out and can't be selected. When I open a new blank document, the Theme option becomes available to be selected again. Is there a checkbox I need to change or something? Thank you for telling me about Shift F-5 working in a document that I haven't closed yet. That is helpful. Maybe I can just lock my computer at night and not close out of the documents I'm working on, but I think our system is taken offline during the night, which would prompt a reboot the next morning anyway. I try to remember to add my own bookmark before closing a document and can then Go To that bookmark but sometimes forget. I will try your suggestion to use Styles. However, just to add my 2¢, one of the many reasons I don't use Styles is because of having the style window open. You are probably a younger man with good vision, but I'm 52 and my eyesight is not what it once was. I refuse to have my screen resolution set to microscopic. I have a hard time seeing most of the dinky screens, such as this reply window, and have to enlarge them. Thanks heavens I found Control+Scroll! In Word 2007, if I have the ribbon open, ONE-THIRD of my screen is taken up. If I also have the style window, or clipboard window, or clipart window, etc., open, that's another big chunk of my document that I can't see. Also, as I told Suzanne Barnhill, I don't know of anyone who uses or likes Styles -- they are not user friendly and whenever I try to use one it makes unintended changes that I didn't want. I'm sure the programmers had good intentions with creating them but the only people I know of who are fans of styles are instructors -- not the people who have to apply them in the real world. "Jay Freedman" wrote: Hi Crystal, While I sympathize with your frustrations, my answer is going to be quite similar to Suzanne's -- the only way to store a custom font color between Word sessions is to create a character style that includes that color, and apply that style to each word or phrase that needs it. A character style can include any font formatting you want; for example, the built-in character style named Emphasis merely applies italic formatting to whatever is selected. Similarly, you can define a character style named Blue and make it include just the pure blue color. I don't know why the blue in the palette isn't RGB 0-0-255, but it's a PITA because you can't use "blue" as a search criterion in the Find dialog if you're dealing with a file from previous versions; the new blue doesn't match the old one. I suspect that the Office developers took their mandate to "make it easy to produce good-looking documents" too literally and enlisted some arty-designer types to give them a makeover. :-( There should be no reason you can't change the theme in an existing document whenever you want. What happens when you try? The Shift+F5 shortcut still works, but only during the current session. The problem here was a design oversight: there is no place in the new .docx format to store the built-in bookmark named \PrevSel1, which in previous versions was the place the first press of Shift+F5 would go. The MVPs told Microsoft about this during the Office 2007 beta, but it was apparently too late to get it fixed. I hope it's in the bug database to be fixed in the next version. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. Crystal wrote: Mr. Freedman, I have the same question. In Word 2007 the font color palette is just awful. I have documents with black text but want to be able to choose a different color for an occasional word here and there. I want the same color that a hyperlink is (RGB 0-0-255) but that color is not available on the Word 2007 font color pallette. When I add that particular color to the palette, it is gone again when I log off and back on again. I got a snippy suggestion from Suzanne Barnhill to use Styles, but I don't see how styles would apply to changing the color of an occasional word here and there in a document. I found themes, but have discovered that a new theme can only be chosen for a new document, I cannot change to a different theme with preferred font colors in an existing document. Can you please pass on a request to the powers that be at Microsoft to stop limiting what we can do in Word and stop making such drastic changes with every new incarnation of Word? They are not making it better, they are making it worse -- and less and less user friendly. They seem to have no idea what end users actually use the program for. In Word 2007 they have also taken away the ability to use Shift F-5 to find the most recently edited spot in a document, so now I have to hunt and seek for the place I left off editing several days and several documents ago. How is this better? And whoever chose those colors for the font color pallette in Word 2007 should be fired. I'm sorry if I sound snippy -- I don't mean to, I know it's nothing you have done or have control over. "Jay Freedman" wrote: Technically, a programmer working on the source code could do anything. However, considering that the source code of Word is proprietary to Microsoft, the question is meaningless. The controlling consideration is whether the managers of the Office division would think it worth the time and expense to make the change, ensure that it's backwardly compatible with older versions, test that it works in all the various languages, and adequately test it; and balance that expense against whatever additional revenue that could be expected because of the change. The phrase "a snowball's chance" comes to mind. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. On Sun, 4 Jan 2009 17:03:02 -0800, comolake wrote: Thank you for the speedy reply! I suspected this would be the case. One followup question - Is it the kind of thing that could be modified by a programmer working on the source code, by any chance? "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote: No, the colors offered are the only ones available for this feature. A custom color could be applied to the text, but this would be direct font formatting. -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA http://word.mvps.org "comolake" wrote in message ... I have a colleague who customarily does all pen-and-paper editing in a "signature" color that is not among the Track Changes color options. Is it possible to change the available palette? Thanks. |
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#10
Posted to microsoft.public.word.docmanagement
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Can I customize the colors available in Track Changes?
Well, young lady, I'm 61, though my eyesight has actually improved since
last year's cataract surgery. Be that as it may, you don't need to have the Styles pane open to apply a style. You can assign a keyboard shortcut to it. Go to Office button Word Options Customize, click the Keyboard Customize button, select the Styles category and the name of the character style, and assign a shortcut. For instance, Ctrl+Alt+B is usually available. (This is the 2007 version of the procedure at http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/Custom...roToHotkey.htm.) Also, you don't have to have the whole ribbon taking up space all the time. Ctrl+F1 hides and unhides it, or you can double-click any of the tabs across the top. While it's minimized, single-click any tab to choose one command from it, and then it will hide again. If you apply a style and the whole document changes, there's a setting you need to turn off. Read http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting...eformatted.htm. What I meant about searching is this: In the Find dialog you can click More Format Font and choose a color to search for, and it should find any text that has that color. If you open a document from Word 2003 or earlier that contains blue text created in the older version, it will be RGB 0-0-255. In Word 2007, when you select the blue patch in the palette as the color to search for, it will be the new blue, RGB 0-112-192. That will cause the match to fail, and the search won't find anything. You'd have to go into the More Colors dialog and specify 0-0-255 instead. Worse, if you (or more likely I) program a macro to search for blue text, the result may depend on which version of Word assigned the font color. That's a PITA. Crystal wrote: Mr. Freedman, thank you very much, I really appreciate such a complete and gracious answer. Again, I apologize if I sound snippy, I don't mean to, but it is frustrating when one gets used to doing work a certain way and then all familiar options are yanked away and one must find totally new options that don't seem to work as well. I'm sorry, I don't understand what you meant in the paragraph about PITA, can you explain that a little further? When I try to choose a different Theme in an existing document, the option is grayed out and can't be selected. When I open a new blank document, the Theme option becomes available to be selected again. Is there a checkbox I need to change or something? Thank you for telling me about Shift F-5 working in a document that I haven't closed yet. That is helpful. Maybe I can just lock my computer at night and not close out of the documents I'm working on, but I think our system is taken offline during the night, which would prompt a reboot the next morning anyway. I try to remember to add my own bookmark before closing a document and can then Go To that bookmark but sometimes forget. I will try your suggestion to use Styles. However, just to add my 2¢, one of the many reasons I don't use Styles is because of having the style window open. You are probably a younger man with good vision, but I'm 52 and my eyesight is not what it once was. I refuse to have my screen resolution set to microscopic. I have a hard time seeing most of the dinky screens, such as this reply window, and have to enlarge them. Thanks heavens I found Control+Scroll! In Word 2007, if I have the ribbon open, ONE-THIRD of my screen is taken up. If I also have the style window, or clipboard window, or clipart window, etc., open, that's another big chunk of my document that I can't see. Also, as I told Suzanne Barnhill, I don't know of anyone who uses or likes Styles -- they are not user friendly and whenever I try to use one it makes unintended changes that I didn't want. I'm sure the programmers had good intentions with creating them but the only people I know of who are fans of styles are instructors -- not the people who have to apply them in the real world. "Jay Freedman" wrote: Hi Crystal, While I sympathize with your frustrations, my answer is going to be quite similar to Suzanne's -- the only way to store a custom font color between Word sessions is to create a character style that includes that color, and apply that style to each word or phrase that needs it. A character style can include any font formatting you want; for example, the built-in character style named Emphasis merely applies italic formatting to whatever is selected. Similarly, you can define a character style named Blue and make it include just the pure blue color. I don't know why the blue in the palette isn't RGB 0-0-255, but it's a PITA because you can't use "blue" as a search criterion in the Find dialog if you're dealing with a file from previous versions; the new blue doesn't match the old one. I suspect that the Office developers took their mandate to "make it easy to produce good-looking documents" too literally and enlisted some arty-designer types to give them a makeover. :-( There should be no reason you can't change the theme in an existing document whenever you want. What happens when you try? The Shift+F5 shortcut still works, but only during the current session. The problem here was a design oversight: there is no place in the new .docx format to store the built-in bookmark named \PrevSel1, which in previous versions was the place the first press of Shift+F5 would go. The MVPs told Microsoft about this during the Office 2007 beta, but it was apparently too late to get it fixed. I hope it's in the bug database to be fixed in the next version. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. Crystal wrote: Mr. Freedman, I have the same question. In Word 2007 the font color palette is just awful. I have documents with black text but want to be able to choose a different color for an occasional word here and there. I want the same color that a hyperlink is (RGB 0-0-255) but that color is not available on the Word 2007 font color pallette. When I add that particular color to the palette, it is gone again when I log off and back on again. I got a snippy suggestion from Suzanne Barnhill to use Styles, but I don't see how styles would apply to changing the color of an occasional word here and there in a document. I found themes, but have discovered that a new theme can only be chosen for a new document, I cannot change to a different theme with preferred font colors in an existing document. Can you please pass on a request to the powers that be at Microsoft to stop limiting what we can do in Word and stop making such drastic changes with every new incarnation of Word? They are not making it better, they are making it worse -- and less and less user friendly. They seem to have no idea what end users actually use the program for. In Word 2007 they have also taken away the ability to use Shift F-5 to find the most recently edited spot in a document, so now I have to hunt and seek for the place I left off editing several days and several documents ago. How is this better? And whoever chose those colors for the font color pallette in Word 2007 should be fired. I'm sorry if I sound snippy -- I don't mean to, I know it's nothing you have done or have control over. "Jay Freedman" wrote: Technically, a programmer working on the source code could do anything. However, considering that the source code of Word is proprietary to Microsoft, the question is meaningless. The controlling consideration is whether the managers of the Office division would think it worth the time and expense to make the change, ensure that it's backwardly compatible with older versions, test that it works in all the various languages, and adequately test it; and balance that expense against whatever additional revenue that could be expected because of the change. The phrase "a snowball's chance" comes to mind. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. On Sun, 4 Jan 2009 17:03:02 -0800, comolake wrote: Thank you for the speedy reply! I suspected this would be the case. One followup question - Is it the kind of thing that could be modified by a programmer working on the source code, by any chance? "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote: No, the colors offered are the only ones available for this feature. A custom color could be applied to the text, but this would be direct font formatting. -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA http://word.mvps.org "comolake" wrote in message ... I have a colleague who customarily does all pen-and-paper editing in a "signature" color that is not among the Track Changes color options. Is it possible to change the available palette? Thanks. |
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#11
Posted to microsoft.public.word.docmanagement
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Can I customize the colors available in Track Changes?
Thank you. Any idea which Style option I should add to the QA toolbar? The
All Commands shows 11 different Styles to choose from, and not having used them much I don't know which one to pick. Also thank you for the link; unfortunately, the IT dept here has a program called Websense (a complete misnomer, as it makes no sense) that blocks 'The Websense category "Social Networking and Personal Sites" ' so I'm unable to read the information. "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote: You don't have to have the Styles & Formatting task pane open to use styles. You can add the Style dropdown to the QAT and use that. You could also assign a keyboard shortcut to your character style (in the same way that you can use Ctrl+B and Ctrl+I for bold and italic. For instructions on how to create a character style, see http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/StyleRef.htm -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA http://word.mvps.org "Crystal" wrote in message ... Mr. Freedman, thank you very much, I really appreciate such a complete and gracious answer. Again, I apologize if I sound snippy, I don't mean to, but it is frustrating when one gets used to doing work a certain way and then all familiar options are yanked away and one must find totally new options that don't seem to work as well. I'm sorry, I don't understand what you meant in the paragraph about PITA, can you explain that a little further? When I try to choose a different Theme in an existing document, the option is grayed out and can't be selected. When I open a new blank document, the Theme option becomes available to be selected again. Is there a checkbox I need to change or something? Thank you for telling me about Shift F-5 working in a document that I haven't closed yet. That is helpful. Maybe I can just lock my computer at night and not close out of the documents I'm working on, but I think our system is taken offline during the night, which would prompt a reboot the next morning anyway. I try to remember to add my own bookmark before closing a document and can then Go To that bookmark but sometimes forget. I will try your suggestion to use Styles. However, just to add my 2¢, one of the many reasons I don't use Styles is because of having the style window open. You are probably a younger man with good vision, but I'm 52 and my eyesight is not what it once was. I refuse to have my screen resolution set to microscopic. I have a hard time seeing most of the dinky screens, such as this reply window, and have to enlarge them. Thanks heavens I found Control+Scroll! In Word 2007, if I have the ribbon open, ONE-THIRD of my screen is taken up. If I also have the style window, or clipboard window, or clipart window, etc., open, that's another big chunk of my document that I can't see. Also, as I told Suzanne Barnhill, I don't know of anyone who uses or likes Styles -- they are not user friendly and whenever I try to use one it makes unintended changes that I didn't want. I'm sure the programmers had good intentions with creating them but the only people I know of who are fans of styles are instructors -- not the people who have to apply them in the real world. "Jay Freedman" wrote: Hi Crystal, While I sympathize with your frustrations, my answer is going to be quite similar to Suzanne's -- the only way to store a custom font color between Word sessions is to create a character style that includes that color, and apply that style to each word or phrase that needs it. A character style can include any font formatting you want; for example, the built-in character style named Emphasis merely applies italic formatting to whatever is selected. Similarly, you can define a character style named Blue and make it include just the pure blue color. I don't know why the blue in the palette isn't RGB 0-0-255, but it's a PITA because you can't use "blue" as a search criterion in the Find dialog if you're dealing with a file from previous versions; the new blue doesn't match the old one. I suspect that the Office developers took their mandate to "make it easy to produce good-looking documents" too literally and enlisted some arty-designer types to give them a makeover. :-( There should be no reason you can't change the theme in an existing document whenever you want. What happens when you try? The Shift+F5 shortcut still works, but only during the current session. The problem here was a design oversight: there is no place in the new .docx format to store the built-in bookmark named \PrevSel1, which in previous versions was the place the first press of Shift+F5 would go. The MVPs told Microsoft about this during the Office 2007 beta, but it was apparently too late to get it fixed. I hope it's in the bug database to be fixed in the next version. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. Crystal wrote: Mr. Freedman, I have the same question. In Word 2007 the font color palette is just awful. I have documents with black text but want to be able to choose a different color for an occasional word here and there. I want the same color that a hyperlink is (RGB 0-0-255) but that color is not available on the Word 2007 font color pallette. When I add that particular color to the palette, it is gone again when I log off and back on again. I got a snippy suggestion from Suzanne Barnhill to use Styles, but I don't see how styles would apply to changing the color of an occasional word here and there in a document. I found themes, but have discovered that a new theme can only be chosen for a new document, I cannot change to a different theme with preferred font colors in an existing document. Can you please pass on a request to the powers that be at Microsoft to stop limiting what we can do in Word and stop making such drastic changes with every new incarnation of Word? They are not making it better, they are making it worse -- and less and less user friendly. They seem to have no idea what end users actually use the program for. In Word 2007 they have also taken away the ability to use Shift F-5 to find the most recently edited spot in a document, so now I have to hunt and seek for the place I left off editing several days and several documents ago. How is this better? And whoever chose those colors for the font color pallette in Word 2007 should be fired. I'm sorry if I sound snippy -- I don't mean to, I know it's nothing you have done or have control over. "Jay Freedman" wrote: Technically, a programmer working on the source code could do anything. However, considering that the source code of Word is proprietary to Microsoft, the question is meaningless. The controlling consideration is whether the managers of the Office division would think it worth the time and expense to make the change, ensure that it's backwardly compatible with older versions, test that it works in all the various languages, and adequately test it; and balance that expense against whatever additional revenue that could be expected because of the change. The phrase "a snowball's chance" comes to mind. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. On Sun, 4 Jan 2009 17:03:02 -0800, comolake wrote: Thank you for the speedy reply! I suspected this would be the case. One followup question - Is it the kind of thing that could be modified by a programmer working on the source code, by any chance? "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote: No, the colors offered are the only ones available for this feature. A custom color could be applied to the text, but this would be direct font formatting. -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA http://word.mvps.org "comolake" wrote in message ... I have a colleague who customarily does all pen-and-paper editing in a "signature" color that is not among the Track Changes color options. Is it possible to change the available palette? Thanks. |
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#12
Posted to microsoft.public.word.docmanagement
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Can I customize the colors available in Track Changes?
I think the youngster (I'm 57) was asking what "PITA" means, and it
ain't Middle Eastern bread. On Apr 28, 1:57*pm, "Jay Freedman" wrote: Well, young lady, I'm 61, though my eyesight has actually improved since last year's cataract surgery. Be that as it may, you don't need to have the Styles pane open to apply a style. You can assign a keyboard shortcut to it. Go to Office button Word Options Customize, click the Keyboard Customize button, select the Styles category and the name of the character style, and assign a shortcut. For instance, Ctrl+Alt+B is usually available. (This is the 2007 version of the procedure athttp://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/AsgnCmdOrMacroToHotkey.htm.) Also, you don't have to have the whole ribbon taking up space all the time. Ctrl+F1 hides and unhides it, or you can double-click any of the tabs across the top. While it's minimized, single-click any tab to choose one command from it, and then it will hide again. If you apply a style and the whole document changes, there's a setting you need to turn off. Readhttp://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/WholeDocumentReformatted.htm. What I meant about searching is this: In the Find dialog you can click More * Format Font and choose a color to search for, and it should find any text that has that color. If you open a document from Word 2003 or earlier that contains blue text created in the older version, it will be RGB 0-0-255. In Word 2007, when you select the blue patch in the palette as the color to search for, it will be the new blue, RGB 0-112-192. That will cause the match to fail, and the search won't find anything. You'd have to go into the More Colors dialog and specify 0-0-255 instead. Worse, if you (or more likely I) program a macro to search for blue text, the result may depend on which version of Word assigned the font color. That's a PITA. Crystal wrote: Mr. Freedman, thank you very much, I really appreciate such a complete and gracious answer. *Again, I apologize if I sound snippy, I don't mean to, but it is frustrating when one gets used to doing work a certain way and then all familiar options are yanked away and one must find totally new options that don't seem to work as well. I'm sorry, I don't understand what you meant in the paragraph about PITA, can you explain that a little further? When I try to choose a different Theme in an existing document, the option is grayed out and can't be selected. *When I open a new blank document, the Theme option becomes available to be selected again. Is there a checkbox I need to change or something? Thank you for telling me about Shift F-5 working in a document that I haven't closed yet. That is helpful. *Maybe I can just lock my computer at night and not close out of the documents I'm working on, but I think our system is taken offline during the night, which would prompt a reboot the next morning anyway. *I try to remember to add my own bookmark before closing a document and can then Go To that bookmark but sometimes forget. I will try your suggestion to use Styles. *However, just to add my 2¢, *one of the many reasons I don't use Styles is because of having the style window open. You are probably a younger man with good vision, but I'm 52 and my eyesight is not what it once was. *I refuse to have my screen resolution set to microscopic. *I have a hard time seeing most of the dinky screens, such as this reply window, and have to enlarge them. Thanks heavens I found Control+Scroll! *In Word 2007, if I have the ribbon open, ONE-THIRD *of my screen is taken up. If I also have the style window, or clipboard window, or clipart window, etc., *open, that's another big chunk of my document that I can't see. *Also, as I told Suzanne Barnhill, I don't know of anyone who uses or likes Styles -- they are not user friendly and whenever I try to use one it makes unintended changes that I didn't want. *I'm sure the programmers had good intentions with creating them but the only people I know of who are fans of styles are instructors -- not the people who have to apply them in the real world. "Jay Freedman" wrote: Hi Crystal, While I sympathize with your frustrations, my answer is going to be quite similar to Suzanne's -- the only way to store a custom font color between Word sessions is to create a character style that includes that color, and apply that style to each word or phrase that needs it. A character style can include any font formatting you want; for example, the built-in character style named Emphasis merely applies italic formatting to whatever is selected. Similarly, you can define a character style named Blue and make it include just the pure blue color. I don't know why the blue in the palette isn't RGB 0-0-255, but it's a PITA because you can't use "blue" as a search criterion in the Find dialog if you're dealing with a file from previous versions; the new blue doesn't match the old one. I suspect that the Office developers took their mandate to "make it easy to produce good-looking documents" too literally and enlisted some arty-designer types to give them a makeover. :-( There should be no reason you can't change the theme in an existing document whenever you want. What happens when you try? The Shift+F5 shortcut still works, but only during the current session. The problem here was a design oversight: there is no place in the new .docx format to store the built-in bookmark named \PrevSel1, which in previous versions was the place the first press of Shift+F5 would go. The MVPs told Microsoft about this during the Office 2007 beta, but it was apparently too late to get it fixed. I hope it's in the bug database to be fixed in the next version. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP * * * *FAQ:http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. Crystal wrote: Mr. Freedman, I have the same question. *In Word 2007 the font color palette is just awful. I have documents with black text but want to be able to choose a different color for an occasional word here and there. *I want the same color that a hyperlink is (RGB 0-0-255) but that color is not available on the Word 2007 font color pallette. When I add that particular color to the palette, it is gone again when I log off and back on again. *I got a snippy suggestion from Suzanne Barnhill to use Styles, but I don't see how styles would apply to changing the color of an occasional word here and there in a document. *I found themes, but have discovered that a new theme can only be chosen for a new document, I cannot change to a different theme with preferred font colors in an existing document. Can you please pass on a request to the powers that be at Microsoft to stop limiting what we can do in Word and stop making such drastic changes with every new incarnation of Word? They are not making it better, they are making it worse -- and less and less user friendly. *They seem to have no idea what end users actually use the program for. *In Word 2007 they have also taken away the ability to use Shift F-5 to find the most recently edited spot in a document, so now I have to hunt and seek for the place I left off editing several days and several documents ago. *How is this better? * And whoever chose those colors for the font color pallette in Word 2007 should be fired. *I'm sorry if I sound snippy -- I don't *mean to, I know it's nothing you have done or have control over. "Jay Freedman" wrote: Technically, a programmer working on the source code could do anything. However, considering that the source code of Word is proprietary to Microsoft, the question is meaningless. The controlling consideration is whether the managers of the Office division would think it worth the time and expense to make the change, ensure that it's backwardly compatible with older versions, test that it works in all the various languages, and adequately test it; and balance that expense against whatever additional revenue that could be expected because of the change. The phrase "a snowball's chance" comes to mind. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP * * * *FAQ:http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. On Sun, 4 Jan 2009 17:03:02 -0800, comolake wrote: Thank you for the speedy reply! I suspected this would be the case. *One followup question - Is it the kind of thing that could be modified by a programmer working on the source code, by any chance? "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote: No, the colors offered are the only ones available for this feature. A custom color could be applied to the text, but this would be direct font formatting. -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA http://word.mvps.org "comolake" wrote in message ... I have a colleague who customarily does all pen-and-paper editing in a "signature" color that is not among the Track Changes color options. *Is it possible to change the available palette? Thanks.- |
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#13
Posted to microsoft.public.word.docmanagement
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Can I customize the colors available in Track Changes?
It's not any of the ones called "Styles" (I agree these are quite confusing)
but the one called "Style," showing a dropdown. If you mouse over it, the ScreenTip says "Commands Not in the Ribbon | Style (StyleGalleryClassic)." I imagine you might be able to access my site from home or elsewhere, but since it would appear that your IT department is blogging the entire mvps.org domain (which includes the very useful word.mvps.org site), you might have a word with the admin. -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA http://word.mvps.org "Crystal" wrote in message ... Thank you. Any idea which Style option I should add to the QA toolbar? The All Commands shows 11 different Styles to choose from, and not having used them much I don't know which one to pick. Also thank you for the link; unfortunately, the IT dept here has a program called Websense (a complete misnomer, as it makes no sense) that blocks 'The Websense category "Social Networking and Personal Sites" ' so I'm unable to read the information. "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote: You don't have to have the Styles & Formatting task pane open to use styles. You can add the Style dropdown to the QAT and use that. You could also assign a keyboard shortcut to your character style (in the same way that you can use Ctrl+B and Ctrl+I for bold and italic. For instructions on how to create a character style, see http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/StyleRef.htm -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA http://word.mvps.org "Crystal" wrote in message ... Mr. Freedman, thank you very much, I really appreciate such a complete and gracious answer. Again, I apologize if I sound snippy, I don't mean to, but it is frustrating when one gets used to doing work a certain way and then all familiar options are yanked away and one must find totally new options that don't seem to work as well. I'm sorry, I don't understand what you meant in the paragraph about PITA, can you explain that a little further? When I try to choose a different Theme in an existing document, the option is grayed out and can't be selected. When I open a new blank document, the Theme option becomes available to be selected again. Is there a checkbox I need to change or something? Thank you for telling me about Shift F-5 working in a document that I haven't closed yet. That is helpful. Maybe I can just lock my computer at night and not close out of the documents I'm working on, but I think our system is taken offline during the night, which would prompt a reboot the next morning anyway. I try to remember to add my own bookmark before closing a document and can then Go To that bookmark but sometimes forget. I will try your suggestion to use Styles. However, just to add my 2¢, one of the many reasons I don't use Styles is because of having the style window open. You are probably a younger man with good vision, but I'm 52 and my eyesight is not what it once was. I refuse to have my screen resolution set to microscopic. I have a hard time seeing most of the dinky screens, such as this reply window, and have to enlarge them. Thanks heavens I found Control+Scroll! In Word 2007, if I have the ribbon open, ONE-THIRD of my screen is taken up. If I also have the style window, or clipboard window, or clipart window, etc., open, that's another big chunk of my document that I can't see. Also, as I told Suzanne Barnhill, I don't know of anyone who uses or likes Styles -- they are not user friendly and whenever I try to use one it makes unintended changes that I didn't want. I'm sure the programmers had good intentions with creating them but the only people I know of who are fans of styles are instructors -- not the people who have to apply them in the real world. "Jay Freedman" wrote: Hi Crystal, While I sympathize with your frustrations, my answer is going to be quite similar to Suzanne's -- the only way to store a custom font color between Word sessions is to create a character style that includes that color, and apply that style to each word or phrase that needs it. A character style can include any font formatting you want; for example, the built-in character style named Emphasis merely applies italic formatting to whatever is selected. Similarly, you can define a character style named Blue and make it include just the pure blue color. I don't know why the blue in the palette isn't RGB 0-0-255, but it's a PITA because you can't use "blue" as a search criterion in the Find dialog if you're dealing with a file from previous versions; the new blue doesn't match the old one. I suspect that the Office developers took their mandate to "make it easy to produce good-looking documents" too literally and enlisted some arty-designer types to give them a makeover. :-( There should be no reason you can't change the theme in an existing document whenever you want. What happens when you try? The Shift+F5 shortcut still works, but only during the current session. The problem here was a design oversight: there is no place in the new .docx format to store the built-in bookmark named \PrevSel1, which in previous versions was the place the first press of Shift+F5 would go. The MVPs told Microsoft about this during the Office 2007 beta, but it was apparently too late to get it fixed. I hope it's in the bug database to be fixed in the next version. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. Crystal wrote: Mr. Freedman, I have the same question. In Word 2007 the font color palette is just awful. I have documents with black text but want to be able to choose a different color for an occasional word here and there. I want the same color that a hyperlink is (RGB 0-0-255) but that color is not available on the Word 2007 font color pallette. When I add that particular color to the palette, it is gone again when I log off and back on again. I got a snippy suggestion from Suzanne Barnhill to use Styles, but I don't see how styles would apply to changing the color of an occasional word here and there in a document. I found themes, but have discovered that a new theme can only be chosen for a new document, I cannot change to a different theme with preferred font colors in an existing document. Can you please pass on a request to the powers that be at Microsoft to stop limiting what we can do in Word and stop making such drastic changes with every new incarnation of Word? They are not making it better, they are making it worse -- and less and less user friendly. They seem to have no idea what end users actually use the program for. In Word 2007 they have also taken away the ability to use Shift F-5 to find the most recently edited spot in a document, so now I have to hunt and seek for the place I left off editing several days and several documents ago. How is this better? And whoever chose those colors for the font color pallette in Word 2007 should be fired. I'm sorry if I sound snippy -- I don't mean to, I know it's nothing you have done or have control over. "Jay Freedman" wrote: Technically, a programmer working on the source code could do anything. However, considering that the source code of Word is proprietary to Microsoft, the question is meaningless. The controlling consideration is whether the managers of the Office division would think it worth the time and expense to make the change, ensure that it's backwardly compatible with older versions, test that it works in all the various languages, and adequately test it; and balance that expense against whatever additional revenue that could be expected because of the change. The phrase "a snowball's chance" comes to mind. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. On Sun, 4 Jan 2009 17:03:02 -0800, comolake wrote: Thank you for the speedy reply! I suspected this would be the case. One followup question - Is it the kind of thing that could be modified by a programmer working on the source code, by any chance? "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote: No, the colors offered are the only ones available for this feature. A custom color could be applied to the text, but this would be direct font formatting. -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA http://word.mvps.org "comolake" wrote in message ... I have a colleague who customarily does all pen-and-paper editing in a "signature" color that is not among the Track Changes color options. Is it possible to change the available palette? Thanks. |
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#14
Posted to microsoft.public.word.docmanagement
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Can I customize the colors available in Track Changes?
okay youse guys, I'm going to be picking your brains because in 5 years when
I can retire from the City of Phx I'll be in the running for the Crabby Office Lady gig. I can out-crabby her with 1 hand tied behind my back. "grammatim" wrote: I think the youngster (I'm 57) was asking what "PITA" means, and it ain't Middle Eastern bread. On Apr 28, 1:57 pm, "Jay Freedman" wrote: Well, young lady, I'm 61, though my eyesight has actually improved since last year's cataract surgery. Be that as it may, you don't need to have the Styles pane open to apply a style. You can assign a keyboard shortcut to it. Go to Office button Word Options Customize, click the Keyboard Customize button, select the Styles category and the name of the character style, and assign a shortcut. For instance, Ctrl+Alt+B is usually available. (This is the 2007 version of the procedure athttp://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/AsgnCmdOrMacroToHotkey.htm.) Also, you don't have to have the whole ribbon taking up space all the time. Ctrl+F1 hides and unhides it, or you can double-click any of the tabs across the top. While it's minimized, single-click any tab to choose one command from it, and then it will hide again. If you apply a style and the whole document changes, there's a setting you need to turn off. Readhttp://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/WholeDocumentReformatted.htm. What I meant about searching is this: In the Find dialog you can click More Format Font and choose a color to search for, and it should find any text that has that color. If you open a document from Word 2003 or earlier that contains blue text created in the older version, it will be RGB 0-0-255. In Word 2007, when you select the blue patch in the palette as the color to search for, it will be the new blue, RGB 0-112-192. That will cause the match to fail, and the search won't find anything. You'd have to go into the More Colors dialog and specify 0-0-255 instead. Worse, if you (or more likely I) program a macro to search for blue text, the result may depend on which version of Word assigned the font color. That's a PITA. Crystal wrote: Mr. Freedman, thank you very much, I really appreciate such a complete and gracious answer. Again, I apologize if I sound snippy, I don't mean to, but it is frustrating when one gets used to doing work a certain way and then all familiar options are yanked away and one must find totally new options that don't seem to work as well. I'm sorry, I don't understand what you meant in the paragraph about PITA, can you explain that a little further? When I try to choose a different Theme in an existing document, the option is grayed out and can't be selected. When I open a new blank document, the Theme option becomes available to be selected again. Is there a checkbox I need to change or something? Thank you for telling me about Shift F-5 working in a document that I haven't closed yet. That is helpful. Maybe I can just lock my computer at night and not close out of the documents I'm working on, but I think our system is taken offline during the night, which would prompt a reboot the next morning anyway. I try to remember to add my own bookmark before closing a document and can then Go To that bookmark but sometimes forget. I will try your suggestion to use Styles. However, just to add my 2¢, one of the many reasons I don't use Styles is because of having the style window open. You are probably a younger man with good vision, but I'm 52 and my eyesight is not what it once was. I refuse to have my screen resolution set to microscopic. I have a hard time seeing most of the dinky screens, such as this reply window, and have to enlarge them. Thanks heavens I found Control+Scroll! In Word 2007, if I have the ribbon open, ONE-THIRD of my screen is taken up. If I also have the style window, or clipboard window, or clipart window, etc., open, that's another big chunk of my document that I can't see. Also, as I told Suzanne Barnhill, I don't know of anyone who uses or likes Styles -- they are not user friendly and whenever I try to use one it makes unintended changes that I didn't want. I'm sure the programmers had good intentions with creating them but the only people I know of who are fans of styles are instructors -- not the people who have to apply them in the real world. "Jay Freedman" wrote: Hi Crystal, While I sympathize with your frustrations, my answer is going to be quite similar to Suzanne's -- the only way to store a custom font color between Word sessions is to create a character style that includes that color, and apply that style to each word or phrase that needs it. A character style can include any font formatting you want; for example, the built-in character style named Emphasis merely applies italic formatting to whatever is selected. Similarly, you can define a character style named Blue and make it include just the pure blue color. I don't know why the blue in the palette isn't RGB 0-0-255, but it's a PITA because you can't use "blue" as a search criterion in the Find dialog if you're dealing with a file from previous versions; the new blue doesn't match the old one. I suspect that the Office developers took their mandate to "make it easy to produce good-looking documents" too literally and enlisted some arty-designer types to give them a makeover. :-( There should be no reason you can't change the theme in an existing document whenever you want. What happens when you try? The Shift+F5 shortcut still works, but only during the current session. The problem here was a design oversight: there is no place in the new .docx format to store the built-in bookmark named \PrevSel1, which in previous versions was the place the first press of Shift+F5 would go. The MVPs told Microsoft about this during the Office 2007 beta, but it was apparently too late to get it fixed. I hope it's in the bug database to be fixed in the next version. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ:http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. Crystal wrote: Mr. Freedman, I have the same question. In Word 2007 the font color palette is just awful. I have documents with black text but want to be able to choose a different color for an occasional word here and there. I want the same color that a hyperlink is (RGB 0-0-255) but that color is not available on the Word 2007 font color pallette. When I add that particular color to the palette, it is gone again when I log off and back on again. I got a snippy suggestion from Suzanne Barnhill to use Styles, but I don't see how styles would apply to changing the color of an occasional word here and there in a document. I found themes, but have discovered that a new theme can only be chosen for a new document, I cannot change to a different theme with preferred font colors in an existing document. Can you please pass on a request to the powers that be at Microsoft to stop limiting what we can do in Word and stop making such drastic changes with every new incarnation of Word? They are not making it better, they are making it worse -- and less and less user friendly. They seem to have no idea what end users actually use the program for. In Word 2007 they have also taken away the ability to use Shift F-5 to find the most recently edited spot in a document, so now I have to hunt and seek for the place I left off editing several days and several documents ago. How is this better? And whoever chose those colors for the font color pallette in Word 2007 should be fired. I'm sorry if I sound snippy -- I don't mean to, I know it's nothing you have done or have control over. "Jay Freedman" wrote: Technically, a programmer working on the source code could do anything. However, considering that the source code of Word is proprietary to Microsoft, the question is meaningless. The controlling consideration is whether the managers of the Office division would think it worth the time and expense to make the change, ensure that it's backwardly compatible with older versions, test that it works in all the various languages, and adequately test it; and balance that expense against whatever additional revenue that could be expected because of the change. The phrase "a snowball's chance" comes to mind. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ:http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. On Sun, 4 Jan 2009 17:03:02 -0800, comolake wrote: Thank you for the speedy reply! I suspected this would be the case. One followup question - Is it the kind of thing that could be modified by a programmer working on the source code, by any chance? "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote: No, the colors offered are the only ones available for this feature. A custom color could be applied to the text, but this would be direct font formatting. -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA http://word.mvps.org "comolake" wrote in message ... I have a colleague who customarily does all pen-and-paper editing in a "signature" color that is not among the Track Changes color options. Is it possible to change the available palette? Thanks.- |
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#15
Posted to microsoft.public.word.docmanagement
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Can I customize the colors available in Track Changes?
Crabby is okay if you know as much as the Crabby Office Lady. BTW, I will be
65 this year. I do have the advantage of a good-sized LCD monitor, but it is not a widescreen, which is what task panes were designed to take advantage of. I also have computer glasses (computers and bifocals don't mix!). -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA http://word.mvps.org "Crystal" wrote in message ... okay youse guys, I'm going to be picking your brains because in 5 years when I can retire from the City of Phx I'll be in the running for the Crabby Office Lady gig. I can out-crabby her with 1 hand tied behind my back. "grammatim" wrote: I think the youngster (I'm 57) was asking what "PITA" means, and it ain't Middle Eastern bread. On Apr 28, 1:57 pm, "Jay Freedman" wrote: Well, young lady, I'm 61, though my eyesight has actually improved since last year's cataract surgery. Be that as it may, you don't need to have the Styles pane open to apply a style. You can assign a keyboard shortcut to it. Go to Office button Word Options Customize, click the Keyboard Customize button, select the Styles category and the name of the character style, and assign a shortcut. For instance, Ctrl+Alt+B is usually available. (This is the 2007 version of the procedure athttp://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/AsgnCmdOrMacroToHotkey.htm.) Also, you don't have to have the whole ribbon taking up space all the time. Ctrl+F1 hides and unhides it, or you can double-click any of the tabs across the top. While it's minimized, single-click any tab to choose one command from it, and then it will hide again. If you apply a style and the whole document changes, there's a setting you need to turn off. Readhttp://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/WholeDocumentReformatted.htm. What I meant about searching is this: In the Find dialog you can click More Format Font and choose a color to search for, and it should find any text that has that color. If you open a document from Word 2003 or earlier that contains blue text created in the older version, it will be RGB 0-0-255. In Word 2007, when you select the blue patch in the palette as the color to search for, it will be the new blue, RGB 0-112-192. That will cause the match to fail, and the search won't find anything. You'd have to go into the More Colors dialog and specify 0-0-255 instead. Worse, if you (or more likely I) program a macro to search for blue text, the result may depend on which version of Word assigned the font color. That's a PITA. Crystal wrote: Mr. Freedman, thank you very much, I really appreciate such a complete and gracious answer. Again, I apologize if I sound snippy, I don't mean to, but it is frustrating when one gets used to doing work a certain way and then all familiar options are yanked away and one must find totally new options that don't seem to work as well. I'm sorry, I don't understand what you meant in the paragraph about PITA, can you explain that a little further? When I try to choose a different Theme in an existing document, the option is grayed out and can't be selected. When I open a new blank document, the Theme option becomes available to be selected again. Is there a checkbox I need to change or something? Thank you for telling me about Shift F-5 working in a document that I haven't closed yet. That is helpful. Maybe I can just lock my computer at night and not close out of the documents I'm working on, but I think our system is taken offline during the night, which would prompt a reboot the next morning anyway. I try to remember to add my own bookmark before closing a document and can then Go To that bookmark but sometimes forget. I will try your suggestion to use Styles. However, just to add my 2¢, one of the many reasons I don't use Styles is because of having the style window open. You are probably a younger man with good vision, but I'm 52 and my eyesight is not what it once was. I refuse to have my screen resolution set to microscopic. I have a hard time seeing most of the dinky screens, such as this reply window, and have to enlarge them. Thanks heavens I found Control+Scroll! In Word 2007, if I have the ribbon open, ONE-THIRD of my screen is taken up. If I also have the style window, or clipboard window, or clipart window, etc., open, that's another big chunk of my document that I can't see. Also, as I told Suzanne Barnhill, I don't know of anyone who uses or likes Styles -- they are not user friendly and whenever I try to use one it makes unintended changes that I didn't want. I'm sure the programmers had good intentions with creating them but the only people I know of who are fans of styles are instructors -- not the people who have to apply them in the real world. "Jay Freedman" wrote: Hi Crystal, While I sympathize with your frustrations, my answer is going to be quite similar to Suzanne's -- the only way to store a custom font color between Word sessions is to create a character style that includes that color, and apply that style to each word or phrase that needs it. A character style can include any font formatting you want; for example, the built-in character style named Emphasis merely applies italic formatting to whatever is selected. Similarly, you can define a character style named Blue and make it include just the pure blue color. I don't know why the blue in the palette isn't RGB 0-0-255, but it's a PITA because you can't use "blue" as a search criterion in the Find dialog if you're dealing with a file from previous versions; the new blue doesn't match the old one. I suspect that the Office developers took their mandate to "make it easy to produce good-looking documents" too literally and enlisted some arty-designer types to give them a makeover. :-( There should be no reason you can't change the theme in an existing document whenever you want. What happens when you try? The Shift+F5 shortcut still works, but only during the current session. The problem here was a design oversight: there is no place in the new .docx format to store the built-in bookmark named \PrevSel1, which in previous versions was the place the first press of Shift+F5 would go. The MVPs told Microsoft about this during the Office 2007 beta, but it was apparently too late to get it fixed. I hope it's in the bug database to be fixed in the next version. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ:http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. Crystal wrote: Mr. Freedman, I have the same question. In Word 2007 the font color palette is just awful. I have documents with black text but want to be able to choose a different color for an occasional word here and there. I want the same color that a hyperlink is (RGB 0-0-255) but that color is not available on the Word 2007 font color pallette. When I add that particular color to the palette, it is gone again when I log off and back on again. I got a snippy suggestion from Suzanne Barnhill to use Styles, but I don't see how styles would apply to changing the color of an occasional word here and there in a document. I found themes, but have discovered that a new theme can only be chosen for a new document, I cannot change to a different theme with preferred font colors in an existing document. Can you please pass on a request to the powers that be at Microsoft to stop limiting what we can do in Word and stop making such drastic changes with every new incarnation of Word? They are not making it better, they are making it worse -- and less and less user friendly. They seem to have no idea what end users actually use the program for. In Word 2007 they have also taken away the ability to use Shift F-5 to find the most recently edited spot in a document, so now I have to hunt and seek for the place I left off editing several days and several documents ago. How is this better? And whoever chose those colors for the font color pallette in Word 2007 should be fired. I'm sorry if I sound snippy -- I don't mean to, I know it's nothing you have done or have control over. "Jay Freedman" wrote: Technically, a programmer working on the source code could do anything. However, considering that the source code of Word is proprietary to Microsoft, the question is meaningless. The controlling consideration is whether the managers of the Office division would think it worth the time and expense to make the change, ensure that it's backwardly compatible with older versions, test that it works in all the various languages, and adequately test it; and balance that expense against whatever additional revenue that could be expected because of the change. The phrase "a snowball's chance" comes to mind. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ:http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. On Sun, 4 Jan 2009 17:03:02 -0800, comolake wrote: Thank you for the speedy reply! I suspected this would be the case. One followup question - Is it the kind of thing that could be modified by a programmer working on the source code, by any chance? "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote: No, the colors offered are the only ones available for this feature. A custom color could be applied to the text, but this would be direct font formatting. -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA http://word.mvps.org "comolake" wrote in message ... I have a colleague who customarily does all pen-and-paper editing in a "signature" color that is not among the Track Changes color options. Is it possible to change the available palette? Thanks.- |
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#16
Posted to microsoft.public.word.docmanagement
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Can I customize the colors available in Track Changes?
I wish I did know as much as she does. I just have the "crabby" part down
pat. I may have to resort to getting some computer glasses too. I have a widescreen monitor but have found that it doesn't increase what you can see, it only stretches out what is there and makes it look distorted, so is of little help. Thank you all for your helpful comments and I bow to all the years of experience combined among you. I will try the Styles thing, but am dubious that I'll be able to figure out how to use it the way I need it. We did figure out how to turn off that "automatically update styles feature" years ago. I had forgotten about that, but I think that was one more reason why no one here bothered to try to use styles. When there's less staff due to budget cuts, and more work with fewer people to do it, it's hard to find the time to try to learn the techniques that might help us do our jobs easier. I've signed up for one of the webinars coming up on 5/20 and am looking forward to learning a lot about Word 2007. "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote: Crabby is okay if you know as much as the Crabby Office Lady. BTW, I will be 65 this year. I do have the advantage of a good-sized LCD monitor, but it is not a widescreen, which is what task panes were designed to take advantage of. I also have computer glasses (computers and bifocals don't mix!). -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA http://word.mvps.org "Crystal" wrote in message ... okay youse guys, I'm going to be picking your brains because in 5 years when I can retire from the City of Phx I'll be in the running for the Crabby Office Lady gig. I can out-crabby her with 1 hand tied behind my back. "grammatim" wrote: I think the youngster (I'm 57) was asking what "PITA" means, and it ain't Middle Eastern bread. On Apr 28, 1:57 pm, "Jay Freedman" wrote: Well, young lady, I'm 61, though my eyesight has actually improved since last year's cataract surgery. Be that as it may, you don't need to have the Styles pane open to apply a style. You can assign a keyboard shortcut to it. Go to Office button Word Options Customize, click the Keyboard Customize button, select the Styles category and the name of the character style, and assign a shortcut. For instance, Ctrl+Alt+B is usually available. (This is the 2007 version of the procedure athttp://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/AsgnCmdOrMacroToHotkey.htm.) Also, you don't have to have the whole ribbon taking up space all the time. Ctrl+F1 hides and unhides it, or you can double-click any of the tabs across the top. While it's minimized, single-click any tab to choose one command from it, and then it will hide again. If you apply a style and the whole document changes, there's a setting you need to turn off. Readhttp://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/WholeDocumentReformatted.htm. What I meant about searching is this: In the Find dialog you can click More Format Font and choose a color to search for, and it should find any text that has that color. If you open a document from Word 2003 or earlier that contains blue text created in the older version, it will be RGB 0-0-255. In Word 2007, when you select the blue patch in the palette as the color to search for, it will be the new blue, RGB 0-112-192. That will cause the match to fail, and the search won't find anything. You'd have to go into the More Colors dialog and specify 0-0-255 instead. Worse, if you (or more likely I) program a macro to search for blue text, the result may depend on which version of Word assigned the font color. That's a PITA. Crystal wrote: Mr. Freedman, thank you very much, I really appreciate such a complete and gracious answer. Again, I apologize if I sound snippy, I don't mean to, but it is frustrating when one gets used to doing work a certain way and then all familiar options are yanked away and one must find totally new options that don't seem to work as well. I'm sorry, I don't understand what you meant in the paragraph about PITA, can you explain that a little further? When I try to choose a different Theme in an existing document, the option is grayed out and can't be selected. When I open a new blank document, the Theme option becomes available to be selected again. Is there a checkbox I need to change or something? Thank you for telling me about Shift F-5 working in a document that I haven't closed yet. That is helpful. Maybe I can just lock my computer at night and not close out of the documents I'm working on, but I think our system is taken offline during the night, which would prompt a reboot the next morning anyway. I try to remember to add my own bookmark before closing a document and can then Go To that bookmark but sometimes forget. I will try your suggestion to use Styles. However, just to add my 2¢, one of the many reasons I don't use Styles is because of having the style window open. You are probably a younger man with good vision, but I'm 52 and my eyesight is not what it once was. I refuse to have my screen resolution set to microscopic. I have a hard time seeing most of the dinky screens, such as this reply window, and have to enlarge them. Thanks heavens I found Control+Scroll! In Word 2007, if I have the ribbon open, ONE-THIRD of my screen is taken up. If I also have the style window, or clipboard window, or clipart window, etc., open, that's another big chunk of my document that I can't see. Also, as I told Suzanne Barnhill, I don't know of anyone who uses or likes Styles -- they are not user friendly and whenever I try to use one it makes unintended changes that I didn't want. I'm sure the programmers had good intentions with creating them but the only people I know of who are fans of styles are instructors -- not the people who have to apply them in the real world. "Jay Freedman" wrote: Hi Crystal, While I sympathize with your frustrations, my answer is going to be quite similar to Suzanne's -- the only way to store a custom font color between Word sessions is to create a character style that includes that color, and apply that style to each word or phrase that needs it. A character style can include any font formatting you want; for example, the built-in character style named Emphasis merely applies italic formatting to whatever is selected. Similarly, you can define a character style named Blue and make it include just the pure blue color. I don't know why the blue in the palette isn't RGB 0-0-255, but it's a PITA because you can't use "blue" as a search criterion in the Find dialog if you're dealing with a file from previous versions; the new blue doesn't match the old one. I suspect that the Office developers took their mandate to "make it easy to produce good-looking documents" too literally and enlisted some arty-designer types to give them a makeover. :-( There should be no reason you can't change the theme in an existing document whenever you want. What happens when you try? The Shift+F5 shortcut still works, but only during the current session. The problem here was a design oversight: there is no place in the new .docx format to store the built-in bookmark named \PrevSel1, which in previous versions was the place the first press of Shift+F5 would go. The MVPs told Microsoft about this during the Office 2007 beta, but it was apparently too late to get it fixed. I hope it's in the bug database to be fixed in the next version. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ:http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. Crystal wrote: Mr. Freedman, I have the same question. In Word 2007 the font color palette is just awful. I have documents with black text but want to be able to choose a different color for an occasional word here and there. I want the same color that a hyperlink is (RGB 0-0-255) but that color is not available on the Word 2007 font color pallette. When I add that particular color to the palette, it is gone again when I log off and back on again. I got a snippy suggestion from Suzanne Barnhill to use Styles, but I don't see how styles would apply to changing the color of an occasional word here and there in a document. I found themes, but have discovered that a new theme can only be chosen for a new document, I cannot change to a different theme with preferred font colors in an existing document. Can you please pass on a request to the powers that be at Microsoft to stop limiting what we can do in Word and stop making such drastic changes with every new incarnation of Word? They are not making it better, they are making it worse -- and less and less user friendly. They seem to have no idea what end users actually use the program for. In Word 2007 they have also taken away the ability to use Shift F-5 to find the most recently edited spot in a document, so now I have to hunt and seek for the place I left off editing several days and several documents ago. How is this better? And whoever chose those colors for the font color pallette in Word 2007 should be fired. I'm sorry if I sound snippy -- I don't mean to, I know it's nothing you have done or have control over. "Jay Freedman" wrote: Technically, a programmer working on the source code could do anything. However, considering that the source code of Word is proprietary to Microsoft, the question is meaningless. The controlling consideration is whether the managers of the Office division would think it worth the time and expense to make the change, ensure that it's backwardly compatible with older versions, test that it works in all the various languages, and adequately test it; and balance that expense against whatever additional revenue that could be expected because of the change. The phrase "a snowball's chance" comes to mind. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ:http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. On Sun, 4 Jan 2009 17:03:02 -0800, comolake wrote: Thank you for the speedy reply! I suspected this would be the case. One followup question - Is it the kind of thing that could be modified by a programmer working on the source code, by any chance? "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote: No, the colors offered are the only ones available for this feature. A custom color could be applied to the text, but this would be direct font formatting. -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA http://word.mvps.org "comolake" wrote in message ... I have a colleague who customarily does all pen-and-paper editing in a "signature" color that is not among the Track Changes color options. Is it possible to change the available palette? Thanks.- |
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#17
Posted to microsoft.public.word.docmanagement
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Can I customize the colors available in Track Changes?
For a jumpstart on using styles, see
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/stylesms/index.html. As for the widescreen monitor, if it is stretching and distorting your window, then it may be that the screen resolution needs to be changed to a more appropriate one. I'm absolutely no expert on this, but I've seen enough widescreen TVs in stores that were obviously incorrectly set that this was one of the things we thoroughly explored when we brought home our new HDTV! -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA http://word.mvps.org "Crystal" wrote in message ... I wish I did know as much as she does. I just have the "crabby" part down pat. I may have to resort to getting some computer glasses too. I have a widescreen monitor but have found that it doesn't increase what you can see, it only stretches out what is there and makes it look distorted, so is of little help. Thank you all for your helpful comments and I bow to all the years of experience combined among you. I will try the Styles thing, but am dubious that I'll be able to figure out how to use it the way I need it. We did figure out how to turn off that "automatically update styles feature" years ago. I had forgotten about that, but I think that was one more reason why no one here bothered to try to use styles. When there's less staff due to budget cuts, and more work with fewer people to do it, it's hard to find the time to try to learn the techniques that might help us do our jobs easier. I've signed up for one of the webinars coming up on 5/20 and am looking forward to learning a lot about Word 2007. "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote: Crabby is okay if you know as much as the Crabby Office Lady. BTW, I will be 65 this year. I do have the advantage of a good-sized LCD monitor, but it is not a widescreen, which is what task panes were designed to take advantage of. I also have computer glasses (computers and bifocals don't mix!). -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA http://word.mvps.org "Crystal" wrote in message ... okay youse guys, I'm going to be picking your brains because in 5 years when I can retire from the City of Phx I'll be in the running for the Crabby Office Lady gig. I can out-crabby her with 1 hand tied behind my back. "grammatim" wrote: I think the youngster (I'm 57) was asking what "PITA" means, and it ain't Middle Eastern bread. On Apr 28, 1:57 pm, "Jay Freedman" wrote: Well, young lady, I'm 61, though my eyesight has actually improved since last year's cataract surgery. Be that as it may, you don't need to have the Styles pane open to apply a style. You can assign a keyboard shortcut to it. Go to Office button Word Options Customize, click the Keyboard Customize button, select the Styles category and the name of the character style, and assign a shortcut. For instance, Ctrl+Alt+B is usually available. (This is the 2007 version of the procedure athttp://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/AsgnCmdOrMacroToHotkey.htm.) Also, you don't have to have the whole ribbon taking up space all the time. Ctrl+F1 hides and unhides it, or you can double-click any of the tabs across the top. While it's minimized, single-click any tab to choose one command from it, and then it will hide again. If you apply a style and the whole document changes, there's a setting you need to turn off. Readhttp://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/WholeDocumentReformatted.htm. What I meant about searching is this: In the Find dialog you can click More Format Font and choose a color to search for, and it should find any text that has that color. If you open a document from Word 2003 or earlier that contains blue text created in the older version, it will be RGB 0-0-255. In Word 2007, when you select the blue patch in the palette as the color to search for, it will be the new blue, RGB 0-112-192. That will cause the match to fail, and the search won't find anything. You'd have to go into the More Colors dialog and specify 0-0-255 instead. Worse, if you (or more likely I) program a macro to search for blue text, the result may depend on which version of Word assigned the font color. That's a PITA. Crystal wrote: Mr. Freedman, thank you very much, I really appreciate such a complete and gracious answer. Again, I apologize if I sound snippy, I don't mean to, but it is frustrating when one gets used to doing work a certain way and then all familiar options are yanked away and one must find totally new options that don't seem to work as well. I'm sorry, I don't understand what you meant in the paragraph about PITA, can you explain that a little further? When I try to choose a different Theme in an existing document, the option is grayed out and can't be selected. When I open a new blank document, the Theme option becomes available to be selected again. Is there a checkbox I need to change or something? Thank you for telling me about Shift F-5 working in a document that I haven't closed yet. That is helpful. Maybe I can just lock my computer at night and not close out of the documents I'm working on, but I think our system is taken offline during the night, which would prompt a reboot the next morning anyway. I try to remember to add my own bookmark before closing a document and can then Go To that bookmark but sometimes forget. I will try your suggestion to use Styles. However, just to add my 2¢, one of the many reasons I don't use Styles is because of having the style window open. You are probably a younger man with good vision, but I'm 52 and my eyesight is not what it once was. I refuse to have my screen resolution set to microscopic. I have a hard time seeing most of the dinky screens, such as this reply window, and have to enlarge them. Thanks heavens I found Control+Scroll! In Word 2007, if I have the ribbon open, ONE-THIRD of my screen is taken up. If I also have the style window, or clipboard window, or clipart window, etc., open, that's another big chunk of my document that I can't see. Also, as I told Suzanne Barnhill, I don't know of anyone who uses or likes Styles -- they are not user friendly and whenever I try to use one it makes unintended changes that I didn't want. I'm sure the programmers had good intentions with creating them but the only people I know of who are fans of styles are instructors -- not the people who have to apply them in the real world. "Jay Freedman" wrote: Hi Crystal, While I sympathize with your frustrations, my answer is going to be quite similar to Suzanne's -- the only way to store a custom font color between Word sessions is to create a character style that includes that color, and apply that style to each word or phrase that needs it. A character style can include any font formatting you want; for example, the built-in character style named Emphasis merely applies italic formatting to whatever is selected. Similarly, you can define a character style named Blue and make it include just the pure blue color. I don't know why the blue in the palette isn't RGB 0-0-255, but it's a PITA because you can't use "blue" as a search criterion in the Find dialog if you're dealing with a file from previous versions; the new blue doesn't match the old one. I suspect that the Office developers took their mandate to "make it easy to produce good-looking documents" too literally and enlisted some arty-designer types to give them a makeover. :-( There should be no reason you can't change the theme in an existing document whenever you want. What happens when you try? The Shift+F5 shortcut still works, but only during the current session. The problem here was a design oversight: there is no place in the new .docx format to store the built-in bookmark named \PrevSel1, which in previous versions was the place the first press of Shift+F5 would go. The MVPs told Microsoft about this during the Office 2007 beta, but it was apparently too late to get it fixed. I hope it's in the bug database to be fixed in the next version. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ:http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. Crystal wrote: Mr. Freedman, I have the same question. In Word 2007 the font color palette is just awful. I have documents with black text but want to be able to choose a different color for an occasional word here and there. I want the same color that a hyperlink is (RGB 0-0-255) but that color is not available on the Word 2007 font color pallette. When I add that particular color to the palette, it is gone again when I log off and back on again. I got a snippy suggestion from Suzanne Barnhill to use Styles, but I don't see how styles would apply to changing the color of an occasional word here and there in a document. I found themes, but have discovered that a new theme can only be chosen for a new document, I cannot change to a different theme with preferred font colors in an existing document. Can you please pass on a request to the powers that be at Microsoft to stop limiting what we can do in Word and stop making such drastic changes with every new incarnation of Word? They are not making it better, they are making it worse -- and less and less user friendly. They seem to have no idea what end users actually use the program for. In Word 2007 they have also taken away the ability to use Shift F-5 to find the most recently edited spot in a document, so now I have to hunt and seek for the place I left off editing several days and several documents ago. How is this better? And whoever chose those colors for the font color pallette in Word 2007 should be fired. I'm sorry if I sound snippy -- I don't mean to, I know it's nothing you have done or have control over. "Jay Freedman" wrote: Technically, a programmer working on the source code could do anything. However, considering that the source code of Word is proprietary to Microsoft, the question is meaningless. The controlling consideration is whether the managers of the Office division would think it worth the time and expense to make the change, ensure that it's backwardly compatible with older versions, test that it works in all the various languages, and adequately test it; and balance that expense against whatever additional revenue that could be expected because of the change. The phrase "a snowball's chance" comes to mind. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ:http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. On Sun, 4 Jan 2009 17:03:02 -0800, comolake wrote: Thank you for the speedy reply! I suspected this would be the case. One followup question - Is it the kind of thing that could be modified by a programmer working on the source code, by any chance? "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote: No, the colors offered are the only ones available for this feature. A custom color could be applied to the text, but this would be direct font formatting. -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA http://word.mvps.org "comolake" wrote in message ... I have a colleague who customarily does all pen-and-paper editing in a "signature" color that is not among the Track Changes color options. Is it possible to change the available palette? Thanks.- |
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