Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

Been fiddling for about thirty minutes now.

Is there a way to change the overall background color in an OpenOffice document from white to black? The background button changes lines of text--that's not what I want. I want to change the entire background to black. White text on black produces less strain. Is there an option somewhere that I'm not seeing?

Hi and welcome to the forum!

Have you tried the Tools>Options>OOo>Appearance options?

Thanks to add '[Solved]' at beginning of your first post title (edit button) if your issue has been fixed.

I know this is old but maybe this will help others that are browsing for the solution since I've had difficulty finding a solution myself. I had the same problem and this is what worked for me. Format>Page>Background>Color>Black Then choose the option to change the whole project or just that one page. Hope this helps.

A better method is to use a black image as the page background, and stretch it to the page edges so you are not left with white margins. That will also print all the black as black on the paper which will use vast quantities of ink. Also slightly ragged edges will make small text very difficult to read when printed white on black compared with black on white.

Or do you just want the screen to be "white on black" while you are editing?

Many people want the screen black for slideshows... if they're doing a presentation and using their laptop as a teleprompter for instance. If you simply set a black screen then when you go into your slideshow your display just turns white after you've put in all of the work of make page of page that will not display correctly. This problem has been going on for years and searching for a solution online has proven to be fairly difficult. You can use a black pic as the background as you suggested or you can format the page to be black just as easily. Both are viable options for users looking to have a black background with white lettering. Thanks for the input, hopefully it will help others in the future.

Format>Page... Background

Format>Page... Background

It will colorize only the area between the margins. You need set margins to 0 value - if you want colorize the whole page.

I thought it was about presentations. Presentation slides have no page borders.

I thought it was about presentations. Presentation slides have no page borders.

Ahh, the original post did not determined the application:

Been fiddling for about thirty minutes now.

Is there a way to change the overall background color in an OpenOffice document from white to black? The background button changes lines of text--that's not what I want. I want to change the entire background to black. White text on black produces less strain. Is there an option somewhere that I'm not seeing?

Sorry, I missed the pervious post:

Many people want the screen black for slideshows... if they're doing a presentation and using their laptop as a teleprompter for instance. If you simply set a black screen then when you go into your slideshow your display just turns white after you've put in all of the work of make page of page that will not display correctly. This problem has been going on for years and searching for a solution online has proven to be fairly difficult. You can use a black pic as the background as you suggested or you can format the page to be black just as easily. Both are viable options for users looking to have a black background with white lettering. Thanks for the input, hopefully it will help others in the future.

You can change the background to black and still use borders if you like. Many people just want to see a black screen with white letters. If you use a black pic as the background it will leave an unchanged border so they will still not get what they are looking for. There's not much to elaborate on, they just want a black screen with white letters on it when they open the slide to full screen. As the OP stated "I want to change the entire background to black. White text on black produces less strain. Is there an option somewhere that I'm not seeing?" Format>Page>background>Color>Black make the whole page black in a presentation. This should be a background template option when starting a new project.