# A way to change the color of the text cursor in Microsoft Word 2007?



## andrewset (Sep 17, 2007)

Is there a way to darken/change the color of the text cursor (the one that looks like an 'I' that your mouse pointer turns into) in Microsoft Word (Office 2007)? I have my document background a gray color, to be easier on my eyes than white, but then the text cursor is very hard to find without concentrating on searching for it, because it's also gray.


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## Jack.Sparrow (Jan 22, 2007)

I don't know if it's possible to change it in word only, but you can try changing your pointer scheme, which might make it easier to see. 

To do this: 
Go to Start > Control Panel > Mouse > Pointers Tab 

Might help :4-dontkno


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## andrewset (Sep 17, 2007)

thanks, i tried that before but it doesn't affect the word 2007 text pointer, unfortunately=) it's got its own special one


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## Glaswegian (Sep 16, 2005)

AFAIK items like the text cursor are built in functions and cannot be changed in the way you mean. AS JS has mentioned, changing your pointers scheme is the only real alternative.


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## skurfur (Jun 27, 2008)

"The text cursor, also known as the Insertion Point, is the blinking bar shown in most text fields.


Text Cursor, blink rate

Control Panel >> Keyboard >> Speed tab >> Cursor blink rate


Text Cursor, blink rate and size

Control Panel >> Accessibility Options >> Display tab >> Cursor Options section
" - Windows XP in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

The thickness helps for IE but doesn't help with Word or Excel, but increasing the blink rate will help as long as you don't go into epileptic seizures.

My theme is a mod of the high-contrast theme... a background (text area) of dark grey, and lime font. I increased the text cursor to be thicker, and it now looks like a Vi cursor. Looks great and my eyes are thankful.

Also helps to change Windows Explorer (IE7) to not use Windows default colors but set the background (text area) to white (google for it).


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## skurfur (Jun 27, 2008)

More fiddling because of font colors, inconsiderate CSS, and accessibility. It seems CSS can be a problem if a webpage hasn't set all the colors and backgrounds, but left some up to the default (e.g. set the background color of a ID or DIV to white but left the font to the default).

Correct some webpages the CSS colors:
1. Edit and save a style sheet as high-contrast-correction-internet.css, correct-ie-colors.css or something like that.


input, button, textarea, select, B, I, U, body, td, select, H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6 {
font-family: veranda, arial;
color: #000000;
}

Tested with IE7 and the CSS may not need everything, but I've read there are quirks with certain browsers so I'm going with the brute force.

2. Change IE settings to 'Ignore font styles specified on webpages'.
3. Change IE settings to use the stylesheet above with 'Format documents using my style sheet'

Google to find out how to change the IE settings. 

As a side note, I can't wait to test if this will help reading ugly myspace pages.

*some = This solution has limited success. Some pages get uglier (e.g. if the background is dark) so changing the default colors will work for some page but not others.


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