Hi Mark:
Just tried everything for recommend. Nothing worked. Not even the restart
after choosing the option.
Sorry about that: I had very little hope that it would.
There's one more thing we can try. I did not suggest it before, because I
am pretty sure that what you have already done would eliminate it, but for
completeness, we should replace your Normal template.
1) Quit all Microsoft applications.
2) Track down all instances of pre-2008 Normal template on your computer,
and drag them to your desktop. The file is called simply "Normal" and has
no extension.
3) Find and drag the file Normal.dotm to your desktop. Unless you have
moved it, it should be in
/Users/ ~ /Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/User Templates/My
Templates/
4) Delete:
User/Library/Preferences/com.Microsoft.Word.plist
User/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2008 (the whole folder!)
5) Now re-start Word 2008 and try again.
Be thorough with this, if you leave any of these files behind Word 2008 will
find them and re-create the problem. Do it right and Word will construct a
new, clean, set of preferences.
While I appreciate your humor, humor happens to be quite powerful in putting
down others, and, therefore, needs comment where it is not quite accurate, or
is at least a matter of opinion:
Ummm... I had no intention of putting you down. I was making a "joke". It
was not supposed to be 'accurate'. If it had been accurate, methinks it
would not have been funny...
I guess it may be relevant to know that the people helping in here are ALL
doing it as a leisure activity. We are all volunteers, none of us work for
Microsoft, and we want to have a little fun along the way. Actually, that's
not quite true: You will see some Microsoft engineers in here occasionally
at the moment, helping us out with the new product. But most of THEM are
also here in their own time, (or their boss is probably on their case about
the time they're spending in here...)
gibberish out of the other eye. After trying almost everything, she uses only
white text on blue background, which was recommended by her eye doctor. So it
is a common medical recommendation. She uses a PC, and has no problem.
An eye doctor I worked with for another instance of such a problem
recommended amber on black or green on black. So I am not sure how 'common'
it is. However, Word won't do those either.
I figured you had a reason for wanting it, but I suggest that you need to
find another way to achieve the requirement. Particularly, study the
information Apple publishes on Universal Access.
Checking Word help menus, I have not found how to make the background white a
purer white and the text darker, purer black, instead of the grayish mess I
now get.
You are right: Word has no ability to adjust its display colours. Word
2007 makes an attempt with different colour schemes. However, both will
take your computer's word for it that what it is sending as "white" is
actually white.
You may wish to have a play with your monitor/graphics card's gamma,
contrast, brightness, and colour temperature adjustments.
I assume you know how to set these: if not, come back and we'll give you
some hints.
Onwards: Microsoft brought out their new Office 08 when they saw fit, and not
all that quickly after Leopard's release.
In large-scale software development (and Office is large-scale, even on the
Mac) features and functionality are basically locked down 12 months before
on-sale date. Anything else leads to disaster.
Don't blame Apple for Microsoft not
getting things right or bringing out a product before it was finished/proofed.
{Giggle} I don't. I blame Apple for some of the problems you are
experiencing, which were directly caused by changes to the way the operating
system works, made after Microsoft's design was fixed. Microsoft gets the
blame for all the ones it should have gotten right and didn't
But your email sort of put the onus solely on Apple. And new
Microsoft OSes seem to have even more problems. So fair is fair.
At least no Vendor can say they didn't get enough warning about Vista
(that's a joke...)
I suspect, without being able to prove it, that your problem is due to
Spaces, and if so, yep, that one is Apple's fault. Microsoft did not find
out about Spaces, let alone see how it worked, until the retail copy
arrived. And that was far too late to design in compatibility with it.
In any case, White text on Blue background is a valued item for many, despite
your acquaintance's rant. Microsoft offers it, and I have lost hours, even
days, trying to get it to work. That is the bottom line!!!!!!!
Well, my comments about starting a support site for White on Blue were only
partly in jest. Microsoft will likely soon remove the feature. I suspect
that the only reason it's still around is because for Office 2008, they
calculated that it would be more expensive to take it out than it would be
to leave it in. It has already been removed from Word 2007.
You actually are one of about five users I have heard of that use it. The
only reason I know about it is that I began supporting users in Word for
DOS, where it was the standard display, back in 1991.
So I suggest that you urgently start letting Microsoft know that you want
it. You and everyone else who uses it. Because currently their research
data shows that "nobody" is using the feature, and it's planned to be
removed.
When you installed Office 2008, it asked you if you wanted to participate in
the Customer Experience Improvement Program. If you said 'yes', Microsoft
now knows that there is 'someone' out there using Blue Background, White
Text. They do not, of course, know "who". But they will get a report that
shows them there is someone out there.
If you turned it off, you may care to turn it back on. It's one of the most
important ways that they learn about people's preferences and problems with
the product.
You should also use Help>Send Feedback to advise them directly, and get
everyone else you know who uses the feature to do so too. You will need
maybe one to ten thousand votes to keep the feature.
Thanks for the real explanations, though. And please answer the regular-text
question!
I will try, if I can find it. Not all of the questions seem to be making it
out to the news server where we volunteer. Note that I am not blaming Apple
for that one!
Cheers
--
Don't wait for your answer, click here:
http://www.word.mvps.org/
Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:
[email protected]