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Make Word 2016 Menus/Interface easier to read?

Anonymous
2018-10-28T18:24:22+00:00

I find the Word 2016 interface hard to read because the menu fonts are small and do not have enough contrast with the background colors on which they paint. I can fix the size issue by running the display at 150% but the contrast is not right being almost dark gay on light grey and kind of pastel.   Any way to customize the menus parts of the interface?  Compare the Word readability to the Open Office which is much easier on the eyes:

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-10-29T11:05:54+00:00

    Thanks Doug.

    I copied your screen cap in to my Word 2016 (Pro Plus)

    I can see slight differences when I compare to my Word 2016.  But it would be better to see a screen cap with both applications open on same machine to make a more direct comparison.

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  2. Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 323K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2018-10-29T08:01:26+00:00

    Hi Stefan,

    2019 is similar

    If that is, in fact, what I am using

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  3. Stefan Blom 341.3K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2018-10-28T23:37:13+00:00

    The contrast is actually better in the most recent update of Office 365. (I believe that Office 2019 will be the same, but I haven't tested it yet.)

    Here is a screen shot of Word from Office 365:

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-10-29T01:52:15+00:00

    The short / simple answer is no.  There is no simple fix for that. As Stefan pointed out, MS recently made a change to Office 365 where they changed the images used in icons, from pixel based to "SVG" (Scalable Vector Graphics) which are "math based" graphics that can be "zoomed" infinitely without breaking down into unreadable blobs.  These seem to be more readable.  This MS (very short) propaganda video shows the old and new icons

    Office 365/2019 New SVG Icons

    https://support.office.com/en-us/article/your-ribbon-icons-have-a-new-look-c6bc4cd8-d151-41d3-8276-fc7c9975eb79

    Here is what MS says about them.

    My understanding that those no-goodniks at MS have limited SVG graphics to Office 365 only (and even there they are slowly rolling it out so you may not have it yet), not to one-time payment versions of Office 2016 or 2019 ... (who knows for sure).

    If you are talking about the text in the menus, there is a workaround. In older versions of Windoze we had option to change the "System font". MS has "improved" that feature out of Windows 10 ... <sigh>.   But (for now) we can still apply a registry hack to change it.  And to simplify that registry hack you can use 3rd party "tweaking" tools.  The tool I use for that specific change (as well as MANY others) is WinAero Tweaker:

    https://winaero.com/index.php

    You can pick larger font sizes or different fonts that are "heavier".  But you have to be aware of unexpected problems. I changed my system font, but found that it does not support the colon character between hours and minutes

    Note, this example is for Menus, a little farther down in the left menu is an option for System font.

    There are other "tweaking" tools if you are willing to look for them.

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