Changing the Word 2003 Background Color

Maybe you don’t know that Word 2003 Background can be change! You can change it to any color that you like.

Why you need to create different backgrounds for your documents? These backgrounds often come in good when you are creating brochures/flyers or certificates.

There are five types of backgrounds available inMicrosoft Word 2003. They are solid color, gradient, texture, pattern, and picture. We will start with the solid colorbackgrounds.

To Create a Solid Color Background

From the Format menu, go to Background and choose a color. This will be your Word background color.

If you don't see a color that you want to use, click the More Colorsoption.

From the Color dialog box displayed, select the color that you want to use and click the OK button.

To Create a Gradient Background

From the Format menu, go to Background and click the Fill Effects to display the Fill Effects dialog box.

There are 4 tabs – Gradient, Texture, Pattern and Picture that allow you to create different style of backgrounds.

The default was in the gradient tab. You need to select what type of color you want, one color, two colors, or preset. A preset is gradient backgrounds that are already made.

If you choose one color, select the color you want by dropping the box down on the right side of the screen.

If you select two colors, then choose the two colors that you want to use on the right side of the screen. For example, red and yellow

If you want to use one of the presets, tick the presets box and go through the presets and find the one that you want to use.

Under the Shading styles section, you can choose the different types of shading style to use. Here we choose the Diagonal up.

Under the Variants section, select the variant that you like.

Once you have completed, click the OK button. The output will be as follow.

Modify Word normal dot template! How to prevent it?

Do you know what is Word Normal.dot template? Word's master template.

There are two basic types of files used in Word, that is .doc, which stands forDocument. The other is a .dot, which stands for Document Template.

When Microsoft Word starts up it loads a template file called Normal.dot and you use this template to create all documents. Else, you can use customized template you've created before to create the documents.

The Word Normal.dot template contains the basic layout (i.e. default font, page margins, styles, etc) and helps shape any documents created from this template. So, it’s important that you need to prevent accidental keystrokes or macro viruses from changing your Word defaults normal template.

You can force Microsoft Word to ask you every time it closes whether you want to save the Normal.dot file. This way, if you know you made necessary changes to your default template you can save the file. Otherwise, you can help prevent mysterious or unintended changes by not overwriting the default template.

To prevent accidental changes to Normal.dot template

From the Tools menu, click Options.

From the Options dialog box displayed, click the Save tab.

Check Prompt to save Normal template option.

Click OK.

A fairly common question is: "How come every time I start a new document there's the same text already written on my page?" That's because, somehow, the user managed to open the blank document template (Normal.dot), typed something on the page, and saved the text to the Normal.dot, as well as whatever document name they saved the file. So they've altered the master template!

To fix the problem, the user needs to reopen the Normal.dot file, remove the text and resave that master template file without the text. Then, when you open again a new Word document, the page will be empty.

However, there are some basic customizations you can do that would probably allow you to work more efficiently. If you want all your documents, or the majority of them, created in a particular font, other than the Times New Roman (the default Normal.dot font), you can change that.

To customize the Normal.dot template

Open a new blank Word document.

From the Format menu, click Font.

From the Font dialog box displayed, change the font you prefer as your default starting font face, style, color, size, etc.

Then, click on a Default button at the bottom of the dialog box. You'll be warned that this change will affect all new documents based on the Normal template.

Click Yes.