MS Office 2002 Small Business Edition will not skin (XP) Why?

I have un-installed WB, MS Office, and re-installed resulting in same problem. The side and bottom scroll bars in Office 2002 are so translucent you can barely seem them. Most other apps seem to have skinned. I also tried setting up Per Application settings to force the skin on Word and Outlook to no avail. Ideas?

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Not all apps play well with WB - and those that play with WB may not play well with some skins.

Office doesn't skin the same way the windows do

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Then why does Office 2003 on my laptop skin? What is so unique about Office 2002 that it does not skin on my desktop?

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Neil Banfield

Join Date 04/2001

+1104

Office 2002 is older and not theme aware.

The scrollbars look light because of the system colours the skin you are using has set.

I believe you can manually add a manifest file to office 2002 to get scrollbars to skin, but the rest of the app will remained unskinned (Microsoft reinvented the wheel with Office)

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Office 2002 (aka XP) didnt even accept Luna.

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There is a product called XP Style Hacker 1.0 (shareware) that Neil got me researching when he mentioned manifest files. When installed this app allows you to enable non Theme / Skin aware apps to be skinned by creating a manifest file for the exe. While I am on the road currently and can't get to my desktop, I do have Symantec WinFax 10.0 installed on my laptop, which is also a "non" Theme / Skin aware app.

I used XP Style Hacker to select the app and I did get the scroll bars to display the skin selected side / bottom slide bar format, but then the tool bar / task bar options when clicked on displayed displayed dull grey pull downs with no text. I went into WB and added FAXMNG32.EXE to Per Application Settings and played with numerous WB modify options to no avail. Finally with everything unchecked except for "if menus appear blank" checked then click Apply Changes, walla, the skinned scroll bars displayed properly and the tool bar / task bar pull down text displayed.

What did I just do? Still not certain that MS Office 2002 Small Business Edition aka Office XP will work as well, but I am now hopefull. Can't wait until the weekend to try it out. XP Style Hacker would be an excellent product to emulate in Stardock WB. I am curious if there is a similar or better product anyone could recommend.

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