sentence turns grey shade when I space or enter

[patd62]

a problem has happened wehre when I type new words in old documents, then the
line turns a light grey. it happens when I press enter or do anything. I've
tried everything in properties but nothing has worked. I have microsoft
office X for mac. Has anybody else encountered this problem? Strangly, when I
disengage the quartz setting, this grey shading doesn't happen. Also, when I
just hit enter and the shading happens, and I try to close, it asks if I'd
like to save, meaning something must have triggered this. Maybe something I
enabled accidently. Please help. Thanks.

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Pat?,

Since no one else has responded to you I have to assume we're all equally
stumped by this. I'm not sure that what I'm going to suggest will have the
slightest effect but it's worth a try.

First, go into your Word preferences and make sure View: Field Codes is not
checked.

If that doesn't help, go to Tools: AutoCorrect: Auto Format as You Type and
uncheck everything (you can always re-check the ones you want later).

If that doesn't do it, select one of the grey lines and go to Format:
Borders and Shading. In the Border and Shading panels, make sure everything
is set to None or No Fill.

If that doesn't do it, try some general trouble shooting. I'd start by
"uncorrupting" one of the documents
(<http://word.mvps.org/Mac/DocumentCorruption.html>). Then I'd test my
preferences (<http://word.mvps.org/Mac/DamagedPrefs.html>) and Normal
template (<http://word.mvps.org/mac/MacWordNormal.html>).

If none of those things work, I'd give up. Just kidding . If none of
those things work, post back. By the way, you do have Office X fully
updated, don't you?

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

Beth Rosengard
MacOffice MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/Mac/WordMacHome.html>
My Site: <http://www.bethrosengard.com>

 

[jerickso]

Hi Pat?,

Since no one else has responded to you I have to assume we're all equally
stumped by this. I'm not sure that what I'm going to suggest will have the
slightest effect but it's worth a try.

First, go into your Word preferences and make sure View: Field Codes is not
checked.

If that doesn't help, go to Tools: AutoCorrect: Auto Format as You Type and
uncheck everything (you can always re-check the ones you want later).

If that doesn't do it, select one of the grey lines and go to Format:
Borders and Shading. In the Border and Shading panels, make sure everything
is set to None or No Fill.

If that doesn't do it, try some general trouble shooting. I'd start by
"uncorrupting" one of the documents
(<http://word.mvps.org/Mac/DocumentCorruption.html>). Then I'd test my
preferences (<http://word.mvps.org/Mac/DamagedPrefs.html>) and Normal
template (<http://word.mvps.org/mac/MacWordNormal.html>).

If none of those things work, I'd give up. Just kidding . If none of
those things work, post back. By the way, you do have Office X fully
updated, don't you?

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

Beth Rosengard
MacOffice MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/Mac/WordMacHome.html>
My Site: <http://www.bethrosengard.com>

 

[jerickso]

Beth,

I'm having the same problem as Pat. I have tried everything you
suggested and nothing works. If I hit the paragraph sign in my ruler
the type usually turns black. Any more help?

Judy

 

[jerickso]

I'm having the same problem and I tried everything you suggested. When
I hit the paragraph mark in my ruler the type turns black, most times.
Any other suggestions. I have ordered the 2004 update for Microsoft
Office and hope that will help. In the meantime I'm going blind with
the light type.

Judy

 

[patd62]

thanks beth, but none of that did work. I ended up turning off the quartz
smoothing and the type doesn't turn gray when I use that mode.

patd

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Pat and Judy,

Would both of you please send me your problem document directly to my email.
Be sure to keep the same subject line or your posts will get thrown out with
the trash .

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

Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/Mac/WordMacHome.html>
My Site: <http://www.bethrosengard.com>

 

[jerickso]

Beth,

I attached my document, I think to your e-mail. I also tried turning
off the quartz smoothing and that works but the type on the screen is
not great. It will make me blind. Hope you can help. This is now
happening in all my WORD documents, not just the one I sent you.

Judy

 

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

Are you both in Word X? Which OS? Patch level? QuickTime fully updated?
Last updates applied to Office? To OS X?

Guys, if you want people to spend time researching your issues, you've GOT
to send detail. If getting the versions and levels of the stuff you're
using is like pulling teeth from a hen, we're just going to give up!!

Cheers

Beth,

I attached my document, I think to your e-mail. I also tried turning
off the quartz smoothing and that works but the type on the screen is
not great. It will make me blind. Hope you can help. This is now
happening in all my WORD documents, not just the one I sent you.

Judy

--

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. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Judy,

It's the field code preference which I mentioned in my first post to Pat
(who hasn't sent me a doc yet so I don't know if it's the same issue, but I
suspect it is).

The text (which is a Table of Contents that was generated by a field code)
is in grey because the preference for Field Shading (look under Show: Field
Codes in Word>Preferences>View) is set to Always (by default). If you set
it to Never, the grey will go away. However this isn't a good idea because
you won't be able to detect the presence of field codes if they're not
highlighted/shaded.

If you want to see the code that generated the TOC, first open the Data
Merge Manager (Tools menu) and in the panel called Preview, click on the
View Field Codes button (looks like {a}). Now go back to Preferences>View
and put a check mark by Field Codes. The TOC will now be a single line of
code that looks something like this:

{ TOC \o "2-2" \t etc. etc. }

That's the code that is generating the TOC.

To learn more about field codes, which you can use for all kinds of things
(like inserting an updating date or time field, for instance), look up field
codes in Word's Help.

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

Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/Mac/WordMacHome.html>
My Site: <http://www.bethrosengard.com>

 

[jerickso]

Beth,

I tried turning the field code to never and sure enough the shading
behind the table of contents goes away but that is not my problem. My
problem is that when I edit a sentence in the text of the report that
sentence turns a light gray. I can get it to go back to black if I hit
the paragraph mark in my ruler once or twice.

I am using Office Mac version X (I just upgraded this to the most
recent version to try to fix this problem). I have just ordered a 2004
upgrade and expect it in a few days. I just recently upgraded to the
Tiger operating system, version 10.4.8.

So I'm still stumped. Please try typing in the body of the report and
you will see my problem. It's annoying and makes it difficult for me to
read. I'm not sure if it prints differently. Haven't gotten that far.

Thanks for your help.

Judy

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Judy,

Sorry I misunderstood the problem. Unfortunately, I can't reproduce it on
my machine. I can type anywhere in the document without seeing any shading
at all.

It's late here so let me sleep on this. But in the meantime, create a new
user (System Prefs> Accounts) and see if the problem persists there. (Drag
a couple of these docs into your HardDrive> Users> Shared folder so you can
access them from the new user.) Let us know what happens.

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

Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/Mac/WordMacHome.html>
My Site: <http://www.bethrosengard.com>

 

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

Please try this:

1) Select a paragraph (make sure you can see your paragraph marks, and
tripple-click to make sure you've really got it... Including the paragraph
mark, which is what contains the formatting)

2) Go to Edit>Clear>Clear formats

3) Now click inside THAT paragraph so your selection is just an insertion
point

4) Now go to Format>Style>Modify>Format>Border... Select "None" in both
the Border and the Shading Tabs.

5) Now try typing again. Look to see if anything changed.

Please start QuickTime, and check that it is fully up-to-date (after a few
seconds, it will try to get an update if it needs one...). Word X uses
Quartz for its text display, and Quartz is updated as part of QuickTime.

I say this because your problem goes away when you turn off Quartz text
smoothing.

If you tell us what (if anything) changed, we can go further. I assume you
just put Update 10.1.9 for Office X in?

The real problem we're chasing here is that Word X was designed long before
OS 10.4 was even thought of. It was actually designed around 10.1, and
they're very different operating systems.

Cheers

Beth,

I tried turning the field code to never and sure enough the shading
behind the table of contents goes away but that is not my problem. My
problem is that when I edit a sentence in the text of the report that
sentence turns a light gray. I can get it to go back to black if I hit
the paragraph mark in my ruler once or twice.

I am using Office Mac version X (I just upgraded this to the most
recent version to try to fix this problem). I have just ordered a 2004
upgrade and expect it in a few days. I just recently upgraded to the
Tiger operating system, version 10.4.8.

So I'm still stumped. Please try typing in the body of the report and
you will see my problem. It's annoying and makes it difficult for me to
read. I'm not sure if it prints differently. Haven't gotten that far.

Thanks for your help.

Judy

--

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. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[jerickso]

John,

I tried what you suggested and I got the same result. I'm hoping when I
dowload the latest version of Office for Mac, 2004, which should arrive
any day now, this might correct itself. It's really hard to work with
this distraction. I'm also afraid I might send out a document with
light gray text.

Any other suggestions would be appreciated. I do not want to create a
new user now if I can avoid it.

judy

 

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

Hi Judy:

I am becoming more and more suspicious of the configuration of Quartz Text
Smoothing on your operating system.

I don't think this is a "Word" problem, I think it's a "Mac" problem (Word
is probably one of the last applications you have to actually USE Quartz
Text Smoothing, which is why you are seeing the issue.

In which case, the problem will be hidden in Word 2004. Word 2004 uses the
newer ATSUI text rendering method.

I am puzzled about you speaking of "downloading Office 2004". You Can't
"download" it, you have to buy it on CD ROM and "install" it. If that's
what you're doing then that's dine, it will offer to remove the old version
when you install. I recommend that you allow it to do that.

I am also puzzled why you do not want to create a new user? It's just a
couple of clicks: takes less than 30 seconds? If it cures the problem,
great, move your documents over. If it doesn't: delete the new user.

Cheers

John,

I tried what you suggested and I got the same result. I'm hoping when I
dowload the latest version of Office for Mac, 2004, which should arrive
any day now, this might correct itself. It's really hard to work with
this distraction. I'm also afraid I might send out a document with
light gray text.

Any other suggestions would be appreciated. I do not want to create a
new user now if I can avoid it.

judy

--

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. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Elliott Roper]

I am also puzzled why you do not want to create a new user? It's just a
couple of clicks: takes less than 30 seconds? If it cures the problem,
great, move your documents over. If it doesn't: delete the new user.

...and furthermore, don't be tempted to run as the main admin user all
the time. It is like riding a motorbike without a skid lid.

By running as a non-admin user, you will be warned, and asked for
admin's name and password before accidentally doing stupid
system-wrecking things like deleting applications.

In addition to that, the damage caused by any trojan or virus that
might one day bite you is far more limited than it would be if you
opened a trojan in the admin account.

 

[jerickso]

I downloaded Office for Mac 2004 and it resolved the issue.

Thanks!

I am also puzzled why you do not want to create a new user? It's just a
couple of clicks: takes less than 30 seconds? If it cures the problem,
great, move your documents over. If it doesn't: delete the new user.

..and furthermore, don't be tempted to run as the main admin user all
the time. It is like riding a motorbike without a skid lid.

By running as a non-admin user, you will be warned, and asked for
admin's name and password before accidentally doing stupid
system-wrecking things like deleting applications.

In addition to that, the damage caused by any trojan or virus that
might one day bite you is far more limited than it would be if you
opened a trojan in the admin account.