OL2000: Word E-mail Has Same Font Color as the Message Background

You may receive an e-mail message that appears blank (has the same font color as the message background).

This problem may occur if the message author uses Microsoft Word as their e-mail editor, and the message recipient has one of the following high contrast settings in their Windows display properties:

• High Contrast Black
• High Contrast Black (extra large)
• High Contrast Black (large)
• High Contrast White
• High Contrast White (extra large)
• High Contrast White (large)

When the author uses Word to compose messages formatted as Rich Text or HTML, the font color defaults to black or white instead of Automatic. The color depends on the display appearance set on the author's computer. The font color is black if the author's window background is white or gray, and the font color is white if the author's window background is black. Therefore, if the recipient is using a high contrast Windows display, the text in the body of the message may have the same color as the background.

NOTE: This problem does not occur with messages formatted as Plain Text.

The author or the recipient can make the body text visible by following these steps:

1. Open the message.
2. On the Edit menu, click Select All.
3. On the Format menu, click Font.
4. In the Font color list, click Automatic and then click OK.

The Automatic color setting uses the text color from the Windows display appearance settings. To access the Windows display appearance settings, right-click the desktop, and then click Display. The settings are located on the Appearance tab.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.