Even though Apple’s Pages app is a pretty solid word processing tool, a lot of Mac users still love to use Microsoft Word. If you’re one of them, that’s cool, we won’t judge you. The biggest problem with using Word on a new MacBook Pro with Retina display is that it looks pretty ugly because it hasn’t been updated to take advantage of the Retina display yet.
The great news for Word fans is there’s a really easy work around that will force your Microsoft Word app to use your MacBook Pro’s Retina display, which makes the app look a lot better. All you got to do is follow these quick steps and you’ll be on the path to more Retina goodness.
- Backup Word.
- Go to Applications folder via Finder, right click on Word, select “copy”
- Paste on your desktop
- Rename the Word on your Desktop to something.
- Move your copy with new name from the Desktop back into your Office Folder
- Right Click on original Word and select “Show Package Contents”
- Double Click Contents
- Right click on “Info.plist” and select “Open With >> TextEdit.app”
- Scroll down to the bottom of the File
- Paste the following before the last two lines <key>NSHighResolutionCapable</key> <string>True</string>
- Save the file and quit TextEdit
- Go back to your Office Folder and copy the original Word app again
- Paste it to your desktop again
- Trash the original Word app in your Office folder
- Move Word from your Desktop back into Office Folder
- Right click Word app, go to Get Info. Notice that “Open in Low Resolution” is no longer checked
- Open up Word
- Type something. Anything. Everything
- Minimize Word and the bring it back up
- Text should now be Retina
- Hit the ^ in the top right corner to Hide/Unhide toolbar and remaining glitches will be fixed
BOOM! Your screen look so beautiful now. Anyone daring enough to see if this trick will work with other apps as well? Let us know what you find.
Source: Reddit
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
20 responses to “Use This Quick Trick To Force Microsoft Word To Use Retina Display”
This worked with PowerPoint as well… I’ll let you know if it works with Excel, too.
No joy on Excel. Only makes the ribbon icons look good. The text in the cells is still fuzzy.
I also got it to work with PowerPoint and Excel! Never knew office work could look so good!!! :D
I have tried it on Excel and it has made the text clearer as well as the ribbon icons
MacMan15 How did you get it to work on Excel?
“All you got to do…”
Really?
I followed the steps but the retina view is only working sporadically. Anyone else having the issue? When I open Word, it is blurry still. Minimizing and then maiming doesn’t change it, although once hitting the green “maximize” button did. Closed the document, tried again, and no dice. Would love to get this working consistently.
worked for me in ppt, excel and word. outlook already looked updated.
This didn’t work for me at all. When I got to the step of editing Info.plist, it wouldn’t let me, saying I don’t have permission to edit the file. I am on an admin account and Get Info lists “read and write” for the file. Any ideas?
Seems to work partially in Powerpoint. Text and ribbon are hires, but shapes are still blurry. Also, if you start the presentation text becomes low res again. Any fix for that?
1. Right click on the file and select “Get Info”.
2. If you have “Administrators” with “read and write” then
2b. Press “+” and add your User Name with read and write permissions.
3. If you have “Your User Name” with “read and write” then
3b. Press “+” and add “Administrators” with read and write permissions
See if this will work.
Thanks! This works great for me in MS-word, BUT for me, every document I open needs to be minimized and restored. Is this the case for everyone else?
I can get the Get Info screen to show Open in Low Resolution unticked, but when I open it and go through the next steps, it is blurry as normal. Anyone have any clues?
OMG~~it worked in OS X10.8.1 but didn’t work in 10.8.2!!why??
how to make this work for power point? thanks
Download and install the latest update from microsoft website because Office apps are not synced with the latest Microsoft Office 2011 Update – 14.2.5. (I don’t know why and it rly sucks!)
i did this and the “open in Low Resolution” box is un-ticked but the application is still in Low Resolution and not Retina. Any ideas? i followed every step carefully.
I just bought a new MacBook Pro Retina running the most recent Mavericks update and tried your method (plus the permissions work around detailed above) and still can’t get Word’s Info.plist to allow me to make the code changes in text edit. Any clue for how to proceed?
You need to change the permissions on every file in the chain. The Office folder first, then Word, then the contents folder, then the plist file. I had to go through the same process to be able to unlock the file. However, even when I change the file, I don’t get see the “open in low resolution” box unchecked, so I’m wondering if I edited the plist file incorrectly?
Thanks for responding — I eventually just resorted to Retinizer http://retinizer.mikelpr.com which solved everything.