Changing Bookmark Colors

Some people like to use Word in (for lack of a better term) "bluescreen mode." This simply means that on the General tab (Click here to see a related figure.) of the Options dialog box (Tools | Options), the user has chosen the Blue Background, White Text option. The result? Exactly what the option states--the background is blue and the text is white. The combination is easier on the eyes of some people than the regular black-on-white text used by Word.

One problem that crops up when using bluescreen mode is that it is very hard to see where bookmarks appear on the screen. (If you have the Bookmarks option selected on the View tab of the Options dialog box.) It would appear that Microsoft forgot to consider the interaction of the bluescreen and visible bookmarks features of Word. An obvious question, then, is whether it is possible to change the colors used by Word to display bookmarks.

Unfortunately, the answer is no--there is no way. Short of reverting back to the normal black-on-white text mode, there are three potential workarounds:

1. Use Word's Goto feature to help locate the difficult-to-spot bookmarks.
2. Use page color settings instead of the actual bluescreen mode to replicate the bluescreen effect, but with a different blue. This is not an easy approach, as it would be necessary to return the color settings to normal before printing the document.
3. Using Windows, change the color settings for your system (Control Panel | Display | Appearance). If you change the Text Area color, the result is a differently shaded "paper" within Word. For instance, if you wanted light ivory paper, you could use an RGB setting of 255, 255, 232. The change will not affect your printouts, but it will affect other programs besides Word.