Change ugly gray background color

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I upgraded from Office 2007 to 2010. Outlook now has an ulgy gray background color for the navigation pane & Outlook borders. I’m guessing this is because I customized Win 7 several months ago when I upgraded from Vista so that my Windows task bar and window borders now look like the Vista color scheme. This is much easier to see for an old, baby-boomer like me than the Aero scheme. Is there a way to modify Outlook borders and the background color of the navigation pane to a more pleasing color than the ugly gray that I have now?

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I think you have to change the Windows 7 theme. Control Panel | Appearance and Personalization | Personalization | Window Color and Appearance | Advanced Appearance Settings.

Joe

--Joe

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I like the appearance of all my windows as they are. I also like the appearance of the various Office apps before I upgraded to Office 2010. Office 2007 windows looked OK. Is there a color control for Outlook 2010 itself?

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You can change the color scheme in File->Options, General, Color Scheme.

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Thanks. It looks a bit better now. I’ll search the web to see if there’s software that provides additional colors.

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Searched the web and found nothing but complaints about the limited color schemes. Can you suggest a site for freeware color schemes that can be added to the three crummy schemes that come with Office 2010?

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From what I’ve read if you change the color scheme in another Office 2010 application it will carry through to all the Office 2010 applications. See Color Scheme Customization for more information.

Joe

--Joe

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The change does carry into all Office apps.

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Yes. The color scheme does carry over to all Office 2010 apps. The choices are really crummy. Does anyone know of freeware that provides more choices?

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Still looking for additional colors …

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Sorry, I can’t find anything. Maybe someone else can help.

Joe

--Joe

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I agree with your opinion of the colour schemes, but if you really want to go berserk (well, not really, but it is frustrating), I suggest you go through all of the ingenious schemes that are available in Outlook for Stationery, which hardly anyone uses. If Microsoft could offer a set of preinstalled schemes as attractive as many of those, then how did we get stuck with the terrible default choices for the interface?

I think this is one case in which no do-it-yourself solution is going to be adequate, and we need to get the message through to Microsoft. As it happens, I followed a link to a Microsoft page minutes ago on which they wanted me to take a survey, which I dismissed, but I think from now on we should all take surveys and complain about the horrible schemes. They have schemes for everything but the interface, and that is practically unreadable.

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