Is Navigation Pane and Property Sheet now grey in latest release?

[Brother Arnold]

Logged on this morning and the navigation pane and Property Sheet are grey rather than the customary white background. MSACCESS.EXE appears to have been updated yesterday. I'm now on file version 16.0.15128.20178. Anyone else experiencing the same thing?

 

[isladogs]

Yes. The update to Access 365 version 2204 has made the background grey as well as the nav pane.

As both are less harsh on the eyes than the old white background, I'm OK with both of those.
However, more irritating is that the property sheet and query build window now look disabled! Not a good change IMHO

 

[Brother Arnold]

Yes. The update to Access 365 version 2204 has made the background grey as well as the nav pane.

As both are less harsh on the eyes than the old white background, I'm OK with both of those.
However, more irritating is that the property sheet and query build window now look disabled! Not a good change IMHO

Agreed it is a bit pony. Cheers

 

[isladogs]

Version 2204 using Colorful theme

I was considering changing to the White theme or Use System Settings but the text in the property sheet was then invisible!

Definitely a bug that needs urgently fixing

EDIT: The property sheet font colour got fixed next time Access opened

 

[GPGeorge]

Apparently no one working in interface design at Microsoft is older than about 27 or 28. It's right there in the job description:

"Ability to discriminate between 50 Shades of Gray and 50 Shades of White"

 

[LarryE]

Logged on this morning and the navigation pane and Property Sheet are grey rather than the customary white background. MSACCESS.EXE appears to have been updated yesterday. I'm now on file version 16.0.15128.20178. Anyone else experiencing the same thing?

I have Office 365 and my nav pane and property sheets have not changed as of this morning so apparently not everyone has received an update. How do you know if you have an update?

 

[Mike Krailo]

The best way to see how this change is for the worse is to switch over to Dark Grey theme or Black theme. The properties window is unreadable. What were they thinking.

Edit: I should add that switching to the White theme will make everything readable again and you'll be a lot happier. The Colorful theme is OK, but I went back to White to keep it simple. What would be nice is to be able to make the main background of the working area a light grey without messing around with Nav Pane and properties, etc...

 

[sonic8]

The best way to see how this change is for the worse is to switch over to Dark Grey theme or Black theme. The properties window is unreadable.

Remember to restart Access (and any other Office application) after switching the Office color theme.
It has always been the case that there are certain areas that do not switch theme color completely without a restart.
This is nothing new. It was this way since the Office Themes were introduced.
This is a bug, but definitely not a serious one.

 

[isladogs]

I have Office 365 and my nav pane and property sheets have not changed as of this morning so apparently not everyone has received an update. How do you know if you have an update?

In the Backstage view (File menu), click Account then look at the version number in About Access. If you have version 2204 (year = 2022; month=04), you have the update that triggered the change in colours

 

[LarryE]

In the Backstage view (File menu), click Account then look at the version number in About Access. If you have version 2204 (year = 2022; month=04), you have the update that triggered the change in colours

Yes, thank you. I have been updated now. I see the nav pane and property sheets are grey. Do I care? Not really, but over the years I have been working with ACCESS greyed meant not enabled.

 

[Mike Krailo]

Phillip, I should have known to fully restart afterwards when switching themes. I just tested and the font color switches to white and readable after a restart in the property sheet.

 

[Pat Hartman]

You'd think that a company with as much money as MS has to blow on stupid stuff that no one asked for like the navigation pain (sic) might include a few old people in their testing team. Yep, 15 years later and I still think the nav pain sucks. A dozen times a day it annoys me as I have to scroll up in a long list to shrink it or use 4 keystrokes (or more) to do something that could be done with 1 in the db window. One change to the database window would have made it fabulous (ability to search all item lists at once.)

I use the black theme (which is absolutely ugly and I hate it) because there is insufficient contrast between the text and the background on the other themes.

When the text is tiny, as it is in the ribbon and properties dialogs, the contrast MUST be more pronounced but apparently, people on the usability team don't know that.

 

[isladogs]

Yes, thank you. I have been updated now. I see the nav pane and property sheets are grey. Do I care? Not really, but over the years I have been working with ACCESS greyed meant not enabled.

Yes - that was my point on post #2

Phillip, I should have known to fully restart afterwards when switching themes. I just tested and the font color switches to white and readable after a restart in the property sheet.

I did mention to do that in post #4

 

[Mike Krailo]

I now have a really strange problem that is inexplicable regarding themes. I have settled on the Dark Grey theme at work because it doesn't look that bad to me. But that exact same theme at home on my high res monitors look horrendous. Why are the colors so different? I tried to adjust the contrast and other setting on the monitor at home and it does nothing to change the actual color of this Dark Grey theme. For comparison, I included screenshots of both at work an at home so you can see how different they are. This has got me baffled.

At work Dark Grey theme:

And at home Dark Grey theme:

 

[isladogs]

Check whether both are the same Access 365 version. There were several tweaks in Access themes for version 2204.
The top screenshot looks like the very dark grey theme in 2204 to me. Almost identical to the black theme

 

[Mike Krailo]

That makes sense isladogs. I have 2204 at work so maybe the one at home hasn't been updated yet. I really hate that bottom grey theme so I see if I can force it to update to get to the darker version.

 

[Gasman]

I'd much prefer your home version

 

[Pat Hartman]

The problem with the home version is there is too little contrast with the text. It is impossible to read the ribbon and the nav pain.

 

[Gasman]

Less glaring to me?
I remember in the old dos days, I had the command window as yellow on blue.

 

[Mike Krailo]

I agree, Pat. The darker version is much easier on the eyes. It's of course nice to have options.