Outlook Office 2007 looks out of focus

[Donald]

I just got a new computer running XP Professional and Outlook Office 2007. I
am used to Outlook 2003. In Outlook 2007 everything in the program looks soft
or fuzzy, or out of focus. It is like there is a text sharpening feature that
is all out of wack. It is driving my eyes crazy.

 

[DL]

Was it like that from the outset?
Is it only OL that has the problem?
Have you maybe used winupdate to install drivers?

 

[VanguardLH]

in message

I just got a new computer running XP Professional and Outlook Office
2007. I
am used to Outlook 2003. In Outlook 2007 everything in the program
looks soft
or fuzzy, or out of focus. It is like there is a text sharpening
feature that
is all out of wack. It is driving my eyes crazy.

So did your old computer have a CRT monitor and now your new computer
has an LCD monitor?

Is it only within Outlook 2007 that text looks fuzzy? Is it fuzzy
everywhere, like the tree pane, headers pane, menu bars, and also the
preview pane? Or is it just when viewing the content of e-mails
(i.e., preview pane)?

 

[Donald]

I am using the same LCD monitor with new computer as I was with the old. It
looks fuzzy everywhere. It is the only application on the computer that looks
like this and have had other people look and agree that it looks fuzzy.
Outlook looks fuzzy everywhere. Thanks for the replies!

 

[Donald]

It has been like this from the outset. My IT guy did the install I'm not sure
how he did it.

 

[VanguardLH]

in message

I am using the same LCD monitor with new computer as I was with the
old. It
looks fuzzy everywhere. It is the only application on the computer
that looks
like this and have had other people look and agree that it looks
fuzzy.
Outlook looks fuzzy everywhere. Thanks for the replies!

Did you set your video card at the monitor's *native* resolution? Any
other resolution requires interpolation which degrades sharpness.

Did you try disabling ClearType?

Is "everywhere" only within Outlook? Or is "everywhere" anywhere on
the screen and for other applications?

 

[Donald]

Cleartype is disabled. Everywhere in Outlook but not in other applications.
All other applications look as they should.

 

[Donald]

The same thing is happening in Excell and all of the Office 07 products.

 

[DL]

In that case perhaps you might want to check if your vid drivers have been
updated, by winupdate

 

[VanguardLH]

Cleartype is disabled. Everywhere in Outlook but not in other
applications.
All other applications look as they should.

Other than suggesting to uninstall and reinstall Outlook, I'm out of
ideas. The fonts used in Outlook are pretty much the same or similar
to what other applications use so there would be no reason why only
Outlook looks fuzzy. I'm assuming that you have tried with Outlook
(look fuzzy) and some other app, like Word, *both* having windows
concurrently displayed on the screen and can even drag one over the
other while Outlook remains fuzzy but the other apps looks sharp.

If it is a small LCD monitor, you might want to up the DPI setting. I
ended up getting a 22-inch LCD widescreen to make the characters look
larger. Unfortunately, upping the screen size also results in upping
the native screen resolution. The 19" had 1440x900 but when I went to
22" then resolution went up to 1680x1050 so my character size did not
improve. If I changed to a lower resolution, the LCD monitor got
fuzzy because it is only sharp at its native resolution. I ended up
increasing the DPI which makes *all* characters look larger, including
those tiny 8-point Tahoma fonts that Microsoft loves. Upping the DPI
also significantly reduced the red tint from the dithering used by
ClearType (so I could go back to ClearType to give the strokes for
characters a bit more visual impact instead of those thin and
emaciated skinny strokes). The DPI setting is under the Display
applet, Settings, advanced tab. However, this will make *all*
characters larger but it works better than just trying to use a
desktop theme with larger fonts (because only some fonts get
enlarged). Some fonts in Outlook are pretty small so maybe the fonts
you are seeing used in other apps that look sharp are larger and why
they look better to your eyes.

 

[VanguardLH]

In that case perhaps you might want to check if your vid drivers
have been updated, by winupdate

NEVER use hardware drives presented at the WU site. Always go to the
hardware vendor's site to get the correct drivers.

 

[VanguardLH]

in message

The same thing is happening in Excell and all of the Office 07
products.

Before it was "everything" was out of focus but only within Outlook.
You said other applications looked sharp. Now it is all MS Office
components that are out of focus. So what are the *other*
applications that DO look focused? Are these other in-focus apps also
using the same fonts as are the MS Office components?

 

[DL]

What I said was to check as to whether winupdate had installed drivers.

Depending on the response I would have answered appropriately

 

[VanguardLH]

What I said was to check as to whether winupdate had installed
drivers.

Depending on the response I would have answered appropriately

Oh, that's what you intended to mean by the comma-delimited and
separate clause ", by winupdate". Okay.

 

[jbrandt]

It looks like this is another dissatified customer of ClearType. Add me to
the list too. I purchased MS-Off07 yesterday and have been pulling my hair
out trying to get rid of ClearType. Same thing happened when IE7.0 was
installed. I've tried turning it off using ALL of the methods found in this
KB http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/926705/en-us?FR=1
but it is still showing up in some of the messages coming into the Outlook
reading panel. New Word docs that I make look horrible on the screen. Ditto
with all of the other apps in Office. There is apparently no way to turn
ClearType off despite assurances that you can.

Now I am faced with the unenvible task of figuring out how to uninstall
Office 2007 and put back Office 2003 without losing all of my contacts in
Outlook. Ugh!

Frankly I think MS Office 2007 is pretty bad after just 2-3 hours of usage.
Now, I have to scour the web and find out who else has come up with this
opinion and what they have done about it.

This is a disaster and wasting my precious time.

~j

 

[VanguardLH]

It looks like this is another dissatified customer of ClearType.

I already asked Donald if he had ClearType enabled and he responded
no. He also claimed that some applications look sharp while only
Outlook looked fuzzy but that has changed to all MS Office components
look fuzzy so now I'm not sure if anything looks sharp, including
non-Office apps.

I purchased MS-Off07 yesterday and have been pulling my hair
out trying to get rid of ClearType.

ClearType is a Windows font dithering feature. Open the Display
applet in Control Panel, Appearance tab, Effects button, and
enable/disable ClearType there. Don't bother selecting Standard
dithering as noted for method 3 in the article you mentioned. Just
turn it off.

If the characters appear to weak (too thin) in their strokes and look
jaggy, well, that's why ClearType got introduced. You might want to
try upping your DPI. You leave the video resolution at the native one
for the LCD monitor so it remains sharp. Rather than use Large Fonts
within the desktop them which only enlarges some fonts, up the DPI
setting to increase the size of all text. Dithering looks better with
larger sized characters but some apps use tiny 8-point fonts.
Dithering on small fonts just makes them look fuzzy. There is also
the issue on LCD monitors that dithering on the vertical strokes
generates a red tinge when not at 100% brightness (write a line of "l"
characters in bold 8-point Tahoma font and see the color tinge when
ClearType is on versus when off).