Can you make MS Word display a black background with white text, but print the inverse?

I am documenting some software in MS Word. I want white text on black background when viewing on the computer (it saves eyes and power), but I want black text on white background to save ink in case people print. Is this possible?

I don't know if this helps but I will likely be saving as PDF. Currently, I have a dark background with "Automatic" font color. Shame there's no way of defining the background to be clever like the font color.

13 Answers

You could use HTML instead of word documents.

Not only is it a standard and easily viewed, but you can actually define different stylesheet for screen and printer.

Depending on your needs, you can knit the markup by hand or customize TinyMCE for your needs.
Or, as is quite common, you could use a wiki system to write your documentation, which would also give you all the features of a wiki (versioning, linking, searching, tagging etc.).

For Word 2013, the easiest method that I know of is:

1. Choose Design on the Ribbon
2. On the far right end of the Ribbon, select Page Color. If you don't see it, you may need to expand the Ribbon to show all commands.
3. Choose your desired page color. If you choose black, Word will automatically display your text in white.

To make the color settings persistent, click Set As Default just to the left of the Page Color button.

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On the ribbon go to "Page Layout" and then "Page Color" - select black Then on the font styles you are using, change the color to white. There's probably a way you can set this up as a default template if you want it for every document. Not sure if it will try to print it this way or not. It's not too hard to switch it all back before you print though. (revert the page background, and select all; change font color)

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Keep your document settings for onscreen viewing as you have chosen (black background, “automatic” text color). In Word 2010, go to the File tab; select Options; select Display; go to Printing options and UNCHECK the box that says “Print background colors and images.” This will PRINT your document with black text on a white background.

Used to be you could activate a mode that gave you white text on a dark blue background, like in the DOS days. It affected only the viewing of the document; it still printed as expected. But they took that out in Office 2007, sorry.

You could in theory write a macro that changed the colors around when printing, and changed them back afterward, and then attach it to the Word document. A lot of work for little gain, though.

FYI, it takes less power to display a white screen on a modern LCD, so if that's your concern, leave it the way it is.

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IT WORKED FOR ME!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you run win 10 and office 2016, you might need latest updates installed. For me it started working in nov. 2018. Now all goes smooth. I hunted this thing (black background) for many, many years and, finally got this. Try this out. Open a new document in word 2016. Go to Design ribbon and on the right click PAGE COLOR in Page background section (the most right in my case). Choose a black color. Then type some text. Now try to print. In my case on the screen I have a black background and white text, but on the paper I've got it inverted, just normal black text on white paper!!!!!!! All works just fine. The only thing left is to figure it out how to make it default. Cause currently if you create a new document, it still opens with white background.

Cheers guys!!! Hope it helps.

uch.NZ

Guys its Damn simple but in a different way.. if on windows 10 press Windows button-> type "color filter" -> turn it on -> choose "inverted" ! It'll be good to check the "shortcut" box so that you can use "Ctrl"+"Windows"+"C" to invert the color instantaneously. For clear description watch here -->

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Another possibility is to use Windows' high contrast mode. The shortcut is shift-alt-print.

It's a not-so-pretty but fast option for many programs that don't supply darkmodes themselves, but sometimes control elements turn invisible because of it. In Word 2019 it seems to work fine so far, and printed pages are, similar to the color-filter solution, still white with black text.

The way it looks can be enhanced a bit in the system settings.

I would choose the high-contrast mode over the color-filter because it changes background- and font-color somewhat more intelligent, IMHO.

You could use a different windows theme while editing your word/excel documents.

There is a inverted contrast accessibility theme that will do just that.

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I found the solution I was looking for by activating Immersive Reader in view->Immersive Reader.
I credit this find to this link

You can do this if you use Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8.

1. Go to Control Panel > Personal display setting > Change theme
2. Then you scroll down until you see high contrast black.
3. Select it

Now everything will go black.

This is useful if you work at night and sleep in day time. Or if you work in a dark environment to save energy or what-so-ever.

This works in any Windows apps if you have Vista, 7 or 8.

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I found a way around this. I create my text documents on Google Drive first (that could be any online resource) while using the Hacker Vision extension which inverts the screen colors to protect your eyesight. Then you can copy it to Word and do the final arrangement :)

Simple just save it as an .html file, open it in firefox then use a plugin that inverts web pages. For example .

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