Blue Background Blues

If you converted from WordPerfect for DOS to Word, you may already be aware that you can configure Word to display white text on a blue background, rather than the regular dark text on a white background. While this can make you feel more at home (as you long for the "good old days" of WordPerfect for DOS), it can present a problem. (Click here to see a related figure.)

The problem rears its ugly head when you insert a text box into your document. By default, the background of a text box is white. This is no real problem, but the text you type in the text box also defaults to white. This means that you are now typing white text on a white background, which is impossible to see.

The way around this, of course, is to either explicitly change the color of the text in the text box, or revert to Word's standard display condition of dark text on a white background.