Can't change text color in Microsoft Word 2010

A re-install of office should theoretically pretty much rule out any problem in the install.

Instead what you probably need to be looking at something related to the users profile.

This could be in few different areas

• Something about a per-user default template
• Something in the Current User hive of the registry for that user
• Some other file or setting stored in the AppsData portion of the users profile.

Usually a quick test to rule out an issue with the profile is simply to login as a separate user on same system and see if you can duplicate the problem. If a separate account works fine, then you need to narrow down where the problem is. You do this by deleting(moving) various likely things in the profile. If the user can live with some loss of settings and configuration, then simply backup any data and nuke the profile and restore data. Issues with the profile and per-user settings can be pretty difficult to trouble-shoot.

Try uninstalling Microsoft Office then reboot.

Afterwards, to make sure every trace has been removed, delete the following folders (if present)

• C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office
• C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Office14
• C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Office
• %AppData%\Microsoft\Office

Then delete the following registry keys:

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office

Reboot once again and then reinstall the Office Product.

One of the common issues that is seen with Microsoft Word, and the latest versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7, is the accessibility issue. This issue is rather simple to replicate:

1. Change your 'Theme' if you will, to any of the High Contrast themes. You can then of course modify those themes to be whatever you want.
2. Open word, and change the color of text; you'll notice that the text doesn't change color.

When using any of the high contrast themes, even if the user has modified the theme to give them a better look than pure white on black, or black on white (like many of our users, who use black with green text), Microsoft Word, Excel, Power Point, any of the Office Suit will not actually color the words. This is due to how Microsoft Office reads the display settings within windows, and gleans what color to use for 'Automatic' text, highlight text, and 'normal' text; on High Contract Themes, this functionality is fixed, not dynamic.

Solution: If user still needs a high contrast theme, set the user to Windows 7 Basic (or Windows Basic for Vista), and then modified the Windows Color options to be what they want; this way, high contrast can still be obtained, but NOT affect the actual performance of the Office Suite.