Microsoft Word in all its dark glory, once fully configured.But let’s start with the obvious: activating Office’s dark mode. There is more to it, as you will see. Here are a few options to get you started: iA Writer and Byword are beloved by Mac users.So, how does Microsoft Word deal with dark mode? Very well, as long as you do not limit yourself to what the majority of guides will suggest you do, that is to use Office 365 dark mode. Dark mode has given me the best of both worlds: a more or less ‘normal’ looking setup, only with bigger fonts, less eye candy and, well, darker colors.There are fantastic plain text apps that provide a heavenly writing environment, especially compared to the hell of Microsoft Word. Are there any other great writing apps like Hemingway I paid for the full version just to encourage more features, and though its pretty cool in its current form, it would be neat to see a more complete suite of auto-editing and auto-critique.Before dark mode was a thing, I was using a high contrast accessibility theme—which is great but also way too radical for my specific needs.Which one to use depends on what you want to do: keep using the traditional page display mode, or not. Not really what we were hoping for.Word offers two ways to go beyond that. You guessed it, this will apply to all Office 365 applications, not just Word.Let’s have a look at a test document in Word.As expected, the user interface is dark but the document itself, our page, remains blindingly white.Word is clever enough to remember that in general paper is white and text should be printed in black. This theme applies only to the screen rendering of your document. You’ve just picked a background color for your entire document, and Word will automatically change its text, using a contrasting color.“But, I don’t want my page to print in dark and my text in white!”It won’t.
![]() If you’re not familiar with Styles: every Word document uses a bunch of styles to define the look of everything on the page and on the screen. Then, right-click the Normal Style button and choose “ Modify…”A window opens— yeah I know, it’s not using dark mode… maybe in a next update?This is where you modify your Styles. Click the “ Styles” button to list most used styles in your document. Don’t panic.Right-click anywhere on the black text, a little pop-up should appear. ![]() Except that I like to have some basic formatting too—I like being able to select the font I’m using, and a first-line indent is a must have for me, and so on. No margins, no page breaks, no headings or footers, nothing but my raw text. I scroll my text like I would in a web browser or any basic text editor. I don’t need to turn pages or to see page borders. You’re left with your content. If you don’t run the most recent Office 365 subscriber version, it may still be named Learning Tools but they share the same icon: an open book with a little loudspeaker on the right page—a loudspeaker because among other features to help students with disabilities, this mode includes a read aloud function.Once activated, the page view is hidden: no borders or margin. Only much better and more polished.This is the mode I use Word most of the time.Go to the View tab and click the Immersive Reader button. If you’re a long time Word user, think of the old Draft mode. Unlike what the name suggests it is not only a great reading mode, but it’s also a great editing mode. I reported the bug and do not use it for the moment. Very recently they added many other colors, but that doesn’t work as well as expected. Use the Page Color to select the black background. But you can turn them off and Word will remember it the next time.In the Immersive Reader tab, click the Text Spacing and the Syllables buttons to turn them off: That’s because this mode was developed to help users with disabilities, and some tools are activated by default. Another cool feature—even if I don’t use it—is the Line Focus that helps focus even more on the section of text you’re working on by diming all your document save 1, 3 or 5 lines around the active line:The Immersive Reader is the mode I use all the time, no matter what I’m writing: a book, a blog post, a short story, research notes, and so on. Zooming only changes the font on screen, not its actual size on page or printed. You can zoom freely, from 10 to 500%. It won’t change the way it is printed. Are There Any Better Writing Apps Than Microsoft Word Free Dark ModePosted on OctoJAuthor David Tags Accessibility, Microsoft Word, Tips and Tricks, WritingThx. Maybe that could be something for another post? □Edit: Here is a similar how-to for LibreOffice (it works bestunder Linux, but is useable too under Windows or macOS): LibreOffice Writer: Clutter Free Dark Mode. And so on.But if you haven’t used Word in recent years it’s impressive to see how it has changed , and it’s so encouraging to see Microsoft constantly improving it accessibilty-wise and, I’m kidding you not, in user-friendliness.For example, one thing I did not mention at all that I use as much as the Immersive Reader is the ability to entirely customize the Ribbon—what tabs to show, and what buttons, and in what order—and the ability to quickly show or hide it, turning it into the most useful type of menu ever created, imo. And you’ll need to subscribe to Office 365 to access all the latest features. Some windows and controls haven’t yet been updated to use dark mode, and a few insist on using fixed font size and therefor can’t be resized. It’s still a huge beast that takes time and efforts to tame. Here, using it in Edge on my ‘Apple’ blog. So, I don’t see that kind of issues: text fields are black or very dark gray for me.And when it’s not working that great with some websites, the extension comes with a few one-click options to quickly tweak color renditions. It works really well on almost all websites. Thx for telling me.I’m using the ‘Dark Reader’ extension ( Firefox, Chrome/Chromium (including my dear Vivaldi browser, which has had a great dark UI for years, btw), Edge, and Safari) to force all websites to use dark colors. I can’t promise anything but I’ll check, tough. It looks promising, but it’s far from being perfect and it’s a also a huge security risk. No idea why.A true lifesaver and the very first extension I install on any browser □Yaron: I’m testing a workaround that imply some heavy tweakings in the way Word is booting, loading a default set of macros. They want them to be white. Oddly, the only permanent problematic pages I’m aware are Google, Firefox and Edge very own extensions stores. Why it doesnt paste text in powerpoint for macAlas, as i wrote, it’s also a security risk… something I’m not that willing to encourage users that may not all be experienced enough to knows what they’re doing.Yep. Use the Reading Mode/Immersive reader view by default as this one one remembers your settings from one session to the sorry for the delay: I just noticed your comment □There is no bullet proof to change Word’s behavior but tweaking what is loaded at startup is helping. Also if a document is hard-coded with to use black text, you’ll need to change it to automatic, no matter what. It’ snot perfect either is it will not always work as expected. Change your default model/template (normal.dotm,) that word loads each time it starts, and set it to use a dark background. The online version is much slower than the installed app. They may or may not affect you depending what you’re using Word for:
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorLisa ArchivesCategories |