Look and Feel of Office 2003 changed by dual monitor setup

[Robert Finnel]

I read a post about Office 2003 look and feel changing to some ancient 16-bit
type of color scheme when dual monitors were enabled. This seems to be
happening to me as well. I tried "repairing" office, and tried reinstalling
the display drivers, but nothing works. It happens just like this guy
described it:

I have a dual monitor setup, and found out that if I disable the 2nd monitor
(extend windows desktop...) in the display settings, the 3-D look and feel
returns.

The instant I re-enable the 2nd monitor by checking the "extend windows
desktop..." box, the currently running office applications immediately revert
to the ancient looking 2-D look and feel.

Color depth is 32 bits on both monitors, and I have tried all sorts of
combinations of resolutions and color depths to no avail. I also can't find
any resolutions at microsoft.com or in any groups.

Does anyone know what is going on? This has been bothering me for a couple
weeks and I had just accepted it as inevitable. I don't have the option of
reinstalling my OS and everything as this is a work computer.

Thanks

 

[Robert Finnel]

It is I again. I got kind of fed up and started removing things from the
device manager and forcing windows to reinstall.

I removed a "display" called "SMS something something" that was listed along
with my graphics adapters.

I also deleted both my monitors from the device manager.

When I reinstalled the "SMS something something" disappeared, but the
monitors were reinstalled.

And voila, Office has it's 3-D look and feel back even with both monitors
enabled!