Dyslexic - use of color - Office 2007

[Whisperer14]

My Granddaughter is dyslexic and to assist her development she needs to work with a blue background. Regretably Microsoft appear to have removed the ability to change the background color of the appropriate 'Normal' template in Office 2007 such that all documents will open with a blue background.

Does any one know of a VBA work-around to modify the Normal template in WORD and EXCEL to meet her requirements.

To date I have produced alternative blue.dotx and blue.xltx which can be opened blue and then saved under a different name.

TIA GT

 

[Whisperer14]

SOLVED - Dyslexic - use of color - Office 2007

Office 2007 and Vista - SOLVED - well work-around anyway! To achieve a permanent blue background to Word 2007 it is neccesary to change the Windows setup, this has the effect that all text backgrounds are changed to blue which is great for a dyslexic person. To achieve this in Vista proceed as follows:

From the control panel select the Ease of Access Centre
When the center opens select the Make things on the screen easier to see option.
Scroll down to Fine tune display effects and select.
A familiar dialogue box opens and to continue we need to select the Advanced button.
From the Item drop-down box select Window
To finish change Color 1 to the desired background color, my granddaughter preferred the blue that is available from the Other option where she used the 6th column and second row. She retained a black font for the text.

With regards the book.xltx and sheet.xltx referred to earlier in the post, this was achieved by using the same color blue as a cell fill and then the creation of artificial grids by applying a dotted border to all cells - somewhat restrictive but it works for her.

Again many thanks for your help, hopefully this may help others.

Gordon

 

[Richard Schollar]

Re: SOLVED - Dyslexic - use of color - Office 2007

Hi Gordon

Thanks for sharing your solution!

 

[Whisperer14]

CORRECTION - Dyslexic - use of color - Office 2007

Correction

Office 2007 and Vista work-around! To achieve a permanent background color change in Office 2007 it is necessary to change the Windows setup, this has the effect that all text backgrounds are changed to that color. Blue is great for a dyslexic person to work with and any color change does not affect the print-out which remains as 'black' on white.

To achieve this in Vista proceed as follows:

From the control panel select the Ease of Access Centre
When the center opens select the Make things on the screen easier to see option.
Scroll down to Fine tune display effects and select.
A familiar dialogue box opens and to continue we need to select the Advanced button.
From the Item drop-down box select Window
To finish change Color 1 to the desired background color.

My granddaughter preferred the blue that is available from the Other option where she used the 6th column and second row. She retained a black font for the text.

With regards the book.xltx and sheet.xltx referred to earlier in the post, this is no longer necessary as the workbook will have the same background color.

Gordon