How to turn dark mode on or off in Microsoft Word

Dark mode can be a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it allows you to rest your eyes a bit from the blinding white light. On the other, if you’re working in Microsoft Word, the page you’re working on will also appear in dark mode. That said, you can change this. Let’s review how to enable or disable dark mode in Word.

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How to change your Office Theme in Word

You can find dark mode in account settings. Changing this will also change your color scheme for the rest of Microsoft Office.

Within Word, click the File tab at the top.

From the menu along the left, click Account.

Under Office Theme, click the dropdown menu.

Select from the available options: Colorful, Dark Gray, Black, White, or Use system setting. If you want the theme to be white, click White or Colorful. If you want a dark mode, select Dark Gray or Black.

Here’s what Colorful would look like.

How to make the page appear white in Word’s dark mode

You’ll notice that, when you select Black for the Office Theme, the page space where you write appears darkened. This can be troublesome if you want the page to remain white.

To change this, go to your document and click the View tab.

Click Switch Modes in the Dark Mode section.

Your page will appear white while everything else remains in dark mode.

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