BUG: Window Colors Cannot Be Customized from Developer Studio

View products that this article applies to.

This article was previously published under Q138873

SYMPTOMS

Not all the window colors change when you customize the window foreground and background colors in Visual C++ Developer Studio. The colors for the Project Workspace window and the Resource Editor window remain unchanged.

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RESOLUTION

If you need to change the color for the Project Workspace window and the Resource Editor window, you need to do it from the operating system's control panel:

Under Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Millennium Edition (Me), Windows NT 4.0, or Windows 2000, click My Computer. Then click Control Panel, and click Display, and click Appearance.

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You can also right-click the Desktop window, and then click Properties to get the Display Properties dialog box. Then click the Appearance tab. In the Item box, select Window. Then choose the foreground or background color. This will affect every window in your system.
Under Windows NT 3.51, click Control Panel, and then click Color. Click Color Palette, and then select Window Background or Window Text under Screen Element. Then choose the color. This will affect every window in your system.

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STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a bug in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article.

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MORE INFORMATION

Steps to Reproduce Problem

On the Developer's Studio Tools menu, click Options to bring up the Options Dialog box. The Format tab holds the settings for the windows and text in Developer's Studio.
Select the All Windows category, and change the foreground or background color.
Click OK, and note that all windows except the Workspace window change color. The color for the Resource Editor window also remains unchanged.
In the Options dialog box, click Reset All to restore all of the original settings.
In the Format settings, from the category list, select Workspace Window. Notice that the buttons to change the colors for background and foreground are disabled (grayed out) and can't be changed.