Why aren't Word documents saving font color?

> and if I print it, that's when it starts out black print & finishes in red.

I checked Word 2007 version on a Windows 7 laptop, and it behaves as Stefan indicated. So, when you first open a document, the Font Color icon on the ribbon always starts out being red, regardless of what the color of the type will be when you start typing. The icon changes color only when you click on the icon and choose a color. Then, the color of the icon is the color you last chose. To my knowledge, it has always behaved that way. One would think that when a document is first opened, the color of the icon would match the color of what you about to type, but it has never worked that way--although it probably should.

Like Suzanne, this sounded like an issue with the printer. However, I'm baffled that when you click the icon to black, that the document no longer changes from black to red when it is printed. So, something else must be going on.

Some questions:

Does it switch from printing black to red in the same place or page in every document?

When you print an Excel spreadsheet, does it change from printing black to red too?

You might try a couple of things which may help narrow the problem:

1. Try saving the Word document as a PDF, then print the PDF using both Adobe Reader and Word to see if there is a difference.
2. You might try printing the Word document on another computer with a different printer, if one is available to see what happens.

This sounds like a printing issue. If your black ink cartridge is low and the printer is substituting a composite black and other component colors are also low, the result could be red print.

The button for Font Color in the ribbon does not reflect the current text color. It never has.

The Font Color button can display a recently selected text color which you have applied to text somewhere in the document, and that color remains until you pick a different one or exit Word. In a new Word session, the color on the button is red, as you have noticed. There is no connection to the current text color.

Upload a screen shot so that we can see what you see.

In Word, if you are seeing text which is red and underlined, you may have inadvertently activated Track Changes.

Check the format of the font in the Style that is applied to the text.