Black Bands in web page when edited with MS Word

[Conan Kelly]

Hello all,

Using Windows XP Professional SP2 with MS Office XP SP 3 (MS Word 2002--10.6802.6735)

Does anyone know what is going on here? I created a Word doc by editing a web page (a show's episode guide) with Word to keep track
of the episodes that I've seen and haven't seen (http://www.epguides.com/farscape/).

When I first created this document, everything was fine. But the next time I opened it up, there were black bands throughout the
document. I tried to recreate the document by once again editing the web page with Word. And once again, the bands showed up. I
deleted all the text from the start of the first band to the end. They disappeared. I entered a bunch of blank lines and they
reappeared. The seem to be at regular intervals, but I have not counted to find out what those intervals are. These black bands
have nothing to do with "Shading" (Format>Borders and Shading...). The text is unreadable since it is the same color as these
bands. In order to read text within these band, I have to change the color or apply some sort of shading. I would rather not do
that, I would like to know what is causing these bands and remove them if possible.

Has anyone experienced this before? Does anyone know how to remove these bands?

The file can be found here: http://home.att.net/~ctbarbarin/files/farscape_epguide.doc for those of you that trust me. I have
removed all code from this document (In Word/Normal.dot I have a keyboard shortcut set for Strikethrough Font Effect--In the
original file still on my machine, the only code I have in this file is for a message box that pops up when the file opens reminding
me of that keyboard shortcut--that code has been removed from the file that is online). I am curious to know if these black bands
show up on anyone else's computers.

Thanks for any help anyone can provide,

Conan Kelly

 

[Jay Freedman]

It might result from having your display color depth set too low. See
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=303507.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

 

[Conan Kelly]

Jay,

Thank you for your feedback.

I'm fairly certain that is not the cause of my problem. This is the only file that this problem occurs in. The view in this file
is set to Web Layout view. Like I mentioned before, these bands appear to be at regular intervals. When font format is set to
Courier New, 10 pt., and paragraph format is set to 0 pt. before and after spacing, these bands seem to be approximately 18 lines
long and approx. 48 lines in between each band. So at the top of the file, everything is fine. The first band starts about 48
lines down and ends about 18 lines after that. Now these bands do not seem to be restricted to Lines of text. Rather they seem to
be restricted to position in the document. If I change the size of the font, you can see that the band stay in the same place but
the text will move in and out of the band according to font size and paragraph spacing.

My color quality is set to 32-bit.

Thanks again for all of your help, but any other ideas will be appreciated.

Conan

 

[Jay Freedman]

For what it's worth, I downloaded your document and opened it in Word
2003, and there weren't any black bands. I do think it has something
to do with your display adapter settings or video driver.

Try an experiment: Go to Start > Settings > Control Panel > Display >
Settings > Advanced > Troubleshoot and move the hardware acceleration
slider a notch or two to the left. Then open the document in Word.
Repeat until either the bands go away or the slider goes all the way
to the left. If the bands go away at any point, it indicates that you
need at least a video driver update, and at worst a more muscular
video card.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

 

[Graham Mayor]

Try updating the display driver and or reducing its hardware acceleration.

--
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>
Graham Mayor - Word MVP


<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>

 

[Conan Kelly]

Jay,

Thanks again for your feed back.

I'm still not 100% certain that it is a display problem, but I'm not going to be so quick to dismiss it this time.

I tried your suggestion with no luck. Still had black bands with no hardware accelerations turned on. I have not yet tried
updating my display driver (when I get a chance, I will see if that makes a difference).

The funny thing is that when I open this file up under my wife's log in, it is just fine. I looked through all of her display
settings and it appears that they are the exact same as mine (I don't know if display settings are system settings or individual
user settings).

Something that I probably should have mentioned, this is on a laptop that spends about 90% of its life in a docking station w/
external monitor. But when I first created this file, it may have been out of the docking station actually being used as a laptop
instead of a desktop. I have not yet checked it with the machine ejected from the docking station (when I get a chance ;-) ).

I posted a screen-shot of Word with this file open and the black bands here:
http://home.att.net/~ctbarbarin/files/farscape_epguide.jpg

Let me know if you still think that this is a display adapter/driver problem. But seeing how it displays just fine on my wife's
login just doesn't seem like it is a display problem.

Thanks again for all of your help. It is very much appreciated.

Conan

 

[Conan Kelly]

Grahm,

Thanks for your feedback.

You had the same suggestion as Jay Freedman. The hardware acceleration didn't work.

If you are still interested, checkout my reply to Jay's last response for some more information.

Thanks again for all of your help,

Conan Kelly

 

[Conan Kelly]

Hello all,

Please forgive me for posting this on m.p.w.vba.general. I didn't see the VBA in there and thought that I was posting it on
m.p.w.general.

Thanks again for everyone's help,

Conan Kelly