I posted this in Eileen's Lounge with no success.


Word2003.




I am implementing animated text.
I create a character style with Marching Black Ants.
I apply the style to a phrase.
Not until I choose Tools, Options, View and check ON Animated text do the black ants start marching.

It seems to me that this Tools Option is not being saved. After lunch I reopen Word and the document and while the text is still bold, the ants do not march.

I figure that there must be/have been a way to make MSWord stay in a mode once set.
Am I doing something wrong?


Thanks, Chris

Chris, you are a glutton for punishment! Microsoft did away with marching ants because of complaints from its corporate clients. They could be activated up until Word 2013 using macros, but were then killed. More on this can be found here: Animated Text Effects in Ribbon Versions of Word.

Anyway, you can record a macro of your option settings and set it as an AutoOpen for your document. You will likely want to edit it way down to just that option. If I could still install Word 2003 on my computer, I would track down the exact command. (I have about ten licenses, but I can't find them.)

Do you have access to Woody Leonhard's Word 97 Annoyances? You should probably track it down if you do not. Much of it still applies to Word 2003.

Hi Charles.
I know that I am a glutton; a large part of my life has been spent tackling jobs that others would not tackle.


The issue is not "Marching Ants"; it is "Tools Options", specifically, how to make the settings permanent. I had dashed off a quick one-liner in Normal.dot, since, except for this project, I do not use marching ants, Red, Black or anything, so a quickie in Normal.dot was simplest.


I had Woody's "Underground Guide For Word for Windows", the Word6.0 book, and a later one by Woody, until I had to downsize on retirement 2011.


My experience is that most bugs/issues I found in Word97 and find in Word2003 continue in later versions to this day. That is why I had hoped someone might be aware of this Tools Options setting failing to remain in place.


Cheers, Chris

Chris, I probably learned the "record a macro to preserve option settings" from Word 97 Annoyances.

Word 2003 fixed many of the bugs in Word 97 as well as a few of the annoyances. The .doc format is prone to more problems than the .docx format as well as taking up more disk space.