why do I see lighter color text in a document

[Ronica]

I can see text in my document that is a lighter shade than the other text.
Someone else created the document & I need to change text. How did that
person get the text to be a lighter shade?

 

[Jay Freedman]

I can see text in my document that is a lighter shade than the other
text. Someone else created the document & I need to change text. How
did that person get the text to be a lighter shade?

It's hard to tell without seeing the document itself, but here are a couple
of possibilities:

- The text's font color may have been changed, either directly or by a
style.
- The lighter text may be in the header or footer, which are lighter when
you're looking at the main text and darker when the header or footer pane is
open.

If you have Word 2002 or 2003, select the lighter text and open the Reveal
Formatting task pane to look for things that affect the font color. In
earlier versions, use the Format > Font and Format > Styles dialogs instead.

If you can't select the lighter text until you double-click at the top of
the page, then it's in a header or footer.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Another possibility is a watermark (if the text you're seeing is behind the
regular document text).