Word - Word 2007 text selection is stuck on black.

So I have had this problem for a while and seen a lot of posts across
the internet about this problem but no solutions. My Word 2007 had the
typical light blue selection for a long time, but out of nowhere it
switched to pure black. Since the selection color is linked to the
windows theme, I tried changing the selection color but that did not
fix it.

I scoured the registry keys for office and nothing really caught my
eye. Since this is a corporate machine, I really do not want to go
through the process of uninstalling and reinstalling just to see if it
fixes it. Anyone have any ideas on how to fix this annoying bug?

I did once find the mechanism for changing "shading" color (IIRC
Windows calls it "highlighting," even though that means something
different in Word); it was somewhere in Windows (not Word) and
affected all programs. But I do not remember where it was, and it was
probably in Vista rather than 7, so this is probably not helpful.

Peter, thank you for your response. I believe what you are talking
about is the system selection color in windows it is called "Selected
Items". This is on an XP machine and to be fair I have done a fair
amount of modifications on it, but this problem just came out of
nowhere. The day it happened, nothing was installed or changed on the
system.

I have seen a lot of these threads and am going to try to keep this
alive to get a resolution on this.

I believe Word/Office ignores a lot of the options that are customizable in Windows. Selection/highlight color is one of those options.

Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

I was going to say the same thing. Word/Office has always been a law unto
itself.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

Hi Kevin,



please check your Windows settings. Sometimes enabling the High
Contrast option will be a problem
(http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Turn-on-High-Contrast-and-change-the-settings).

--
Cheers
Lisa [MS MVP Word]

Lisa,

That was a brilliant idea, unfortunately it was not the problem (but
it seems like that might be a problem for others). I am nearing a
point of a reinstall, but I would really like to avoid that (since I'd
have to deal with corporate IT and down time).

To elaborate a little more on the situation as well:

This is not only effecting word, it is actually all of office. On
outlook, the highlight color when I click on a message is correct (to
the windows theme), but when I highlight text in the actual body it
does the pure black highlight.

).

Office ignores the Windows theme settings. As far as I know, there is nothing you can do about it. Reinstalling certainly will not help.

Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP




Lisa,

That was a brilliant idea, unfortunately it was not the problem (but
it seems like that might be a problem for others). I am nearing a
point of a reinstall, but I would really like to avoid that (since I'd
have to deal with corporate IT and down time).

To elaborate a little more on the situation as well:

This is not only effecting word, it is actually all of office. On
outlook, the highlight color when I click on a message is correct (to
the windows theme), but when I highlight text in the actual body it
does the pure black highlight.