Whether or not you use the magnifier, you may also find zooming in or out of your document useful. Press WINDOWS+ESCAPE to turn the magnifier off (note that you could invert colours then use WINDOWS+MINUS to drop back to no magnification if you want inverted colours without magnification). Press CONTROL+ALT+i to turn invert colours on (note you may prefer this to adjusting the Office theme in the first place – try both and see what works best for you). Press WINDOWS+MINUS to make things smaller Press WINDOWS+PLUS to turn the magnifier on or make things bigger I would recommend, after adjusting the DPI that you next look at using the magnifier if you still want things larger:
Here’s an article I wrote comparing how to do that – it works across your whole computer, not just Office: ). If you want to adjust the size of things on screen, to make them bigger and easier to see, the best way is by adjusting DPI. If there is a tick in there, it’s checked). Press SPACEBAR (or click with the mouse) to uncheck this option (it’s unselected if the square next to it is black. Press TAB (or move the mouse) to “Print background colors and images”ĥ. Go to the “Display” section (control+tab)Ĥ. It is off by default but best to double check before you use up all the black ink / toner:ģ. If you do set your document colour to black, you’ll want to make sure (unless you want this) that you have print background colours and images disabled so if you print, it still comes out black text on white paper. On a slightly lighter dark grey or dark blue the highlight becomes a slightly different shade which is still hard to read but marginally better.
This seems to be worst on the black background where the highlight is grey on black (regular text is white on black). One disadvantage to changing background colour, is that the text selection colour (when you hold down SHIFT and press the arrows to select text) becomes nearly invisible. If you choose a colour from the bottom couple of rows of the black / grey or dark blue columns, it will automatically adjust your text colour to white (rather than black), which is exactly what we want as black on dark grey would be quite hard to read! Jump on over to the Design Ribbon tab (alt, G) You can adjust this by changing the background colour:ġ. Now if you’re like me and prefer (for whatever reason) lighter text on a darker background, what else can you do to make Office easier to read?Ĭhange the background! The theme is great but it only affects the ribbon and background, not your documents which remain black text on white. Click the OK button (or tab to something that isn’t a button and press ENTER) Whack the drop down box next to “Office Theme” (press alt+t, click on it, or tab to it and press the down arrow).Ħ. Fire up your favourite Office program (Word, Excel, Outlook etc)Ĥ. Personally I find the extra glare of a white background irritating and hard to read so I prefer a dark theme.ġ. So clearly some people prefer one and some prefer the other. Why light text on dark background is a bad idea In fact, that perfectly supports my view that users should ALWAYS have a choice as to which colour scheme works best for them: One of my favourites is this short but interesting piece which concludes that light text on a dark background is bad based on research that 50% of people have trouble reading it. On the readability of inverted color schemes There is a lot written on the merits of light text on a dark background or dark text on a light backround, with results landing in both camps: I’d also like to note some other tips here for those seeking to adjust the colours in Word for better readability.įirstly some background, Is light text on dark (a-la the new black colour theme in office) better? Or is dark text on light (as per the document itself in say Word) preferable? Office 2007 / 2010 had a similar theme at one point that was maybe a bit lighter so it’s nice to see it back and better than ever. It provides great contrast on the ribbon and file menu. Microsoft Office now has a new “Black” colour theme, as they put it, their darkest theme yet.