document with flipped background

[turtlebud]

I just received a document where the first page had a black background
and white lettering and the second page had the normal white/no
background and black lettering. It's a form that I need to fill out.
What's weird is that this happens when I open it in word X or word
2004, but not when I have my friend open it in office xp. The document
is supposed to be black on white for both pages (I checked with the
sender).

I tried changing the background, but it is already set as "no fill".
The black background seems to be embedded in the form which is a basic
form with boxes and all. I'd greatly appreciate any help or ideas
someone may have on how I can fix this problem.

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Jimmy,

Try this: Turn on the Show/Hide formatting tool so you can see hidden
characters. Copy all but the very last paragraph mark in the document and
paste into a blank, new Word doc. Does that make any difference?

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
MacOffice MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
(If using Safari, hit Refresh once or twice ­ or use another browser.)
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>

 

[turtlebud]

Hi Beth,

I turned on the show/hide formatting tool and see the paragraph symbol.
It appears that the document has two layers. The first layer is an
object with the drawn boxes for the form. The second layer is the
actual word document with text boxes for each field that is to be
filled out. It doesn't let me select the whole page - rather I can
either select one of the text boxes OR I can select the whole object.

Jimmy

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Sorry, Jimmy. I don't know what else to suggest; hopefully someone else
will. It's a weird problem!

Beth

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Well, I don't have a clue either. But try the other corrupt document fixes,
ON A COPY, though,
http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/DocumentCorruption.htm
(hit reload a few times in Safari, if that doesn't work, try Explorer)

 

[turtlebud]

Daiya, the "save as web page, open webpage, save as word doc" worked!
The page looked a little weird on the screen, but it prints out just
fine. Thanks for the ideas Beth and Daiya!

(i would think that word 2004 should be able to open any older word
document, but i guess there are still some compatibility issues between
mac & pc versions).

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

If round-tripping it through HTML worked, then that may mean there was
corruption in the document, rather than a compatibility issue.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Daiya:

I suspect this is a classic example of Mac Word flipping the Brightness
channel of a bitmap picture. It does this a lot. It's a bug

One trick that might have worked for the poster was to double-click the
form. This would have opened the picture in the picture editor. You don't
need to do anything, you just close it again and save the document. That
often fixes the problem.

Cheers

If round-tripping it through HTML worked, then that may mean there was
corruption in the document, rather than a compatibility issue.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410