Thanks, Paul -- but what I see under Control Panel > Appearance and Personalization > Personalization is "Change the visual and sounds on your computer" which allows me to deal with themes, either my own or Dells. I do see a Display option, but it deals with screen size and multiscreens and color calibration.

I don't see any "Window Color and Appearance>Advanced settings", and, sadly, I don't see any 'Application Background' colour. Application Background color sounds exactly what I'm looking for, but didn't know what to call it.

I think we might be having version differences -- different versions of Windows, I mean, not different versions of Word.

I'm running Windows 8.1, and in my struggles to learn it, I've found many cases where the W8.1 people have removed some useful function from the users control, and have done something invisibly hidden away from the user's view.