Inverting Colors in a Document

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated January 7, 2023)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Word in Microsoft 365, and 2021


Steve has a friend who is suffering from macular degeneration, and has trouble with a white background. He tells Steve, though, that he prefers white text on a black background. So, Steve wonders if it is possible to invert the colors in his Word document, so that it shows white text on a black background to help out his friend.

One easy way to do this is to open the document you want to affect, then display the Design tab of the ribbon. Within the Page Background group, click the Page Color tool. Word displays a color palate from which you can choose a color for the background. If you choose black, then Word automatically changes the text to white so it is visible on the page—there is no need to explicitly change the font color.

This may not be the best solution for your friend, however. Why? Because if the friend is having visual issues, chances are good it is with all computer output, not just the documents that you may send your friend. Thus, the most effective changes may be made on the friend's computer, not on any documents you might create for your friend.

Macular degeneration is a progressive disease, meaning that it will get worse over time. If things haven't progressed too far as of yet, and if your friend is using Microsoft 365, then he or she may find using "dark mode" to be sufficient. You can enable this mode by following the steps on this web page:

https://www.anoopcnair.com/enable-dark-mode-for-microsoft-office-apps-m365/

You can also have your friend choose a darker theme, which can be done by following the steps described on this Microsoft page:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/63e65e1c-08d4-4dea-820e-335f54672310

Your friend can also, if desired, apply color filters within Windows. This has the added advantage of affecting not just Word documents you may send to him or her, but also to increase accessibility to anything displayed on your friend's computer. Here's a link to an article on the WindowsTips site that can help:

https://windows.tips.net/T013702

There are a wide variety of other accessibility features built into Windows that may be helpful to your friend:

https://windows.tips.net/C0255_Accessibility.html

If your friend prefers, there are third-party companies that can provide software-based solutions for those with visual impairments. Here are two such companies:

https://www.freedomscientific.com/
https://www.enhancedvision.com/

Finally, it should be noted that these solutions may not provide satisfactory results for all parts of a Word document. For instance, if you have placed images within your document, the colors of those images may not be affected by all (or any) of the approaches described above. The only way to find out if the results are satisfactory for your needs is to try out the methods and see.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (6136) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Word in Microsoft 365, and 2021.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Copying Comments to Cells

Need to copy whatever is in a comment into a cell on your worksheet? If you have lots of comments, manually doing this ...

Discover More

Footnotes Don't Automatically Renumber

Editing a document can, at times, be hard work. It isn't made easier if you feel that Word is "fighting" you on some ...

Discover More

Creating Many Index Entries at Once

Word makes it fairly easy to create an index. It is creating the index entries that can be tedious, especially if you ...

Discover More

Do More in Less Time! Are you ready to harness the full power of Word 2013 to create professional documents? In this comprehensive guide you'll learn the skills and techniques for efficiently building the documents you need for your professional and your personal life. Check out Word 2013 In Depth today!

More WordTips (ribbon)

Arranging Document Windows

When you have multiple documents open at the same time, you need a way to control how those document windows appear on ...

Discover More

Direction Arrows Confused

What do you do if you open a document, only to find that the arrow keys don't work the way that they should? The first ...

Discover More

Understanding Views

Want to see how your document will look before it's printed? Or, do you want to see what things will look like if you put ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is one minus 0?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)


This Site

Got a version of Word that uses the ribbon interface (Word 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Word, visit our WordTips site focusing on the menu interface.

Videos
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.