Background image on Word 2007 page

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A friend has just come up with this problem:

I was mucking around in Word 2007. I was inserting a picture and then trying to get it to a certain size, when I somehow changed the background to be “graph paper”.

Now anytime I open a word document I have graph paper, even on old documents created prior to yesterday.

It is really annoying, if I transfer the file by email to a different computer it opens up without graph paper.

So it looks like I have changed some setting but what I don’t know

I do not think it is templates as it shouldn’t happen with existing documents

I’m having trouble thinking of anything that would affect all documents – it seems to me to be some kind of setting relating to how word appears on the screen (have asked – but not yet received a reply – what happens in Print Preview or actual printing, but wouldn’t be surprised to find it doesn’t print out). However, I haven’t been able to find such a setting, and Word Help is, as so often these days, useless.

Any ideas out there?

Thanks

Alison C

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Is it possible your friend has turned on Gridlines?

With either a picture or a drawing shape selected, you should see a Format contextual tab. Click the Align button (this button collapses to an icon if your monitor isn’t wide enough to display all the buttons on the Ribbon).

At the bottom is the View Gridlines option. If there’s a check mark next to it, click it to make it go away.

Does this handle it?

Best, Kim

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I did that once – inadvertently when I was just starting to use Word 2007. And it’s the setting just below view gridlines – it’s Grid Settings shown in the screen shot above. Drove me bananas until I figured out what I’d done!

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Thanks, Kim – I reckon that’s exactly what he’s done!

Have passed on the details and expect to hear that all is well.

Cheers

Alison

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You’re welcome!

By the way, clicking View Gridlines on the drop-down menu toggles the check box on the Grid Settings dialog on and off, without ever displaying the dialog. Which means you can easily turn on Gridlines with an inadvertent click.

The thing that I find most crazy-making is that you don’t have access to the feature unless you have a shape, drawing, chart or picture object selected. If you click away, the Gridlines controls are hidden and you’re stuck.

(Well,,, you could run the Word Command from the Macros dialog — but you’d have to know it was ViewGridlines before you could run it.)

Best, Kim

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Well, it’s amazing what you find when you’re no longer looking (but know what you were looking for)!

I thought it slightly odd that there had to be a picture of some sort selected in order to get the Format ribbon for switching off the gridlines; then, by chance, I was toggling my ruler and, Lo and Behold! – there was a checkbox for Gridlines in the View ribbon.

They say brand new users of Office (are there any over the age of 4?) find the ribbon perfectly easy to navigate – think I’m still suffering from having worked with Word since before Windows ever existed – I got soooo comfortable with the old menus that I could recite them in my sleep; but as for finding stuff on the ribons….

Thanks again for your help, fellow loungers – at least it got my friend back on track before my chance discovery – and who knows if I’d even have noticed it there in the View menu if you hadn’t already pointed me in the right direction?

Cheers

Alison

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Alison! Right you are! I rarely visit the View tab and I guess I thought that pertained to Tables. Silly me.

I often format tables to have no border lines, but I still like to see where the borders are. On the Tables Layout tab, you can view a light gray outline of table borders and on the Ribbon it’s called… View Gridlines. Context is critical in life and computer programs.

Thanks for finding this — much easier to recover from Gridlines with this check box.

Best, Kim

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