document colour in word for mac

Hi all

I am trying to change the background colour of a document in Word for Mac 2011.

The colour is currently blue. I have a large number of pages to print and have got a hold of some blue paper to save on the ink cost.

I have tried to change the document background colour to white using the background colour button in the layout tab, but nothing happens to the document. Other buttons in that tab will work fine, watermark for example.

The document was originally created in iWork (Pages), and then converted to both .docx and .doc formats.

I have tried pasting the text and pictures onto a blank document, but it pastes the blue background also!

Any ideas or suggestions the community have would be greatly appreciated

Best regards

Paddy

Could it be that you have "blue background, white text" enabled?

Word menu/Preferences/General tab/uncheck Blue Background, White Text/click Okay

This setting is a holdover from the old days when people used dedicated word processors which usually had text-only monitors that were either blue or green. Microsoft likes to cater to folks who prefer things the old way.

___________________________________________

Randy B. Singer
Co-author of The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th, and 6th editions)

Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance
OS X Maintenance And Troubleshooting
___________________________________________

Hi Randy,

thanks for your prompt reply (apologies for my late one!). That was a new one on me, unfortunately the "blue background white text" box was already unchecked.

If you have any other ideas, please let me know. The only thing I can think of is that the blue colour is set on another layer via a different function, but no idea what that may be.

Kind regards

Paddy

Perhaps Randy will have some better ideas on how to get rid of that blue background. One of the problems with exporting documents from other WP programs like Pages is that it doesn't always export the way you would like.

I suspect that the Pages document was originally formatted with the blue background (Pages is very good at layout work) and it picks up in Word as the same.

Have you tried using the graphics ribbon options in Word 2011 to see if you can somehow neutralize the color or remove the blue? If nothing else works, go back to the original Pages document, remove the blue background and export it once more to DOC or DOCX format.

Hi all,

I think that the export from pages is the problem, and it was also created from a template. I'll try the ribbon, but if it doesn't work I'll try taking each item and pasting into a blank document. (if I change the background in pages, maybe I can cut and paste the content from the pages document?)

Thanks for your suggestions, keep em coming!!

All the best

Paddy

Of course, I meant cut and paste from the word document!!

:-/

Go into the Format menu, choose Background, and then in the window that appears, click on No Fill.

What happens?


___________________________________________

Randy B. Singer
Co-author of The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th, and 6th editions)

Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance
OS X Maintenance And Troubleshooting
___________________________________________