The grey background behind the word doc!

[Miss...@officeformac.com]

I'm sorry if this is a bit of a girly question, but in Word for Mac 2004, there was a nice blue background behind the Word document itself. Mac 2008 is a drab grey that's already driving me nuts. Is there any way of changing the backdrop...

It's probably obvious and I'm just having a blonde moment!

[Miss...@officeformac.com]

I should add, I can change the background in Notebook and Publishing view, just not in Print Layout view, which is the one I tend to use.

[bod...@officeformac.com]

Can't see a way to change that I'm afraid (and no I don't think it's a girly question). However you can have a bright blue background and white text, just like MS-DOS. Which I imagine millions of people want...

But I always find there's some aesthetic bunion when these things come out - and they go away with time. It is all an awful lot faster which is nice.

[John McGhie]

You have only two "skins" so far in Word 2008: "Word Blue" and "Graphite".
I am sure third-party vendors will rush to make alternatives available in
the next few weeks, but currently, there aren't any.

NOBODY wants Blue Background, White Text. Including Microsoft :-) But the
code to produce it is threaded through the code like a rat's nest having a
bad hair day. This is a very old feature that is inherited from the DOS
code base. Which is so ancient and fragile that it's a major project to
find it and remove it. Even disabling it is a major surgical event,
triggering WEEKS of testing to make sure they haven't broken anything else.

Remember that Word's code base is older than many of the coders working on
it these days. And back in those days, applications were designed for
EFFICIENCY at all costs (they had to be...) so no allowance was made for
maintainability... Instead of that feature being produced by a nice
self-contained function, it's weaved through the entire code base as single
statements. Getting it out would be like removing all the "black" sand
grains from a beach with tweezers...

If we are all happy to pay another 100 bucks for the next version of Word,
they'll get right on it. If not, they have more urgent requests to spend
their coding time on .... :-)

Cheers

On 17/01/08 7:34 AM, in article ee88...@webcrossing.caR9absDaxw,
"bod...@officeformac.com" <bod...@officeformac.com> wrote:

--
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/
Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory, Australia
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:jo...@mcghie.name

[CyberTaz]

On 1/17/08 6:12 AM, in article C3B56E3D.DEFA%jo...@mcghie.name, "John McGhie"
<jo...@mcghie.name> wrote:

> You have only two "skins" so far in Word 2008: "Word Blue" and "Graphite".

And, unfortunately, those choices pertain only to the Gallery. There is no
provision for changing the workspace color or the overall program window.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

[Daiya Mitchell]

You could try resizing the window so that very little of it shows. Once
you resize a few windows, it should largely remember your settings,
holler for help if it doesn't.

Also, since they implemented it in other views, be sure to use Help |
Send Feedback in Word and ask for it in Print Layout too.