Hi, Jeff,

That's just the way Word works. When the main body of the document is
active, the headers and footers are gray. When the header or footer is
active, the main body is gray. As you noted, this doesn't affect the way the
document prints.

If you want to see a reasonably accurate picture of the page, use Print
Preview. Although it's possible to edit in that view, I wouldn't recommend
it -- just pop in and out of it for a quick check.

If you mean that your page numbers has a gray background
then there is actually something you can do, namely, set
field shading to "Never" on the View tab of the
Tools>Options dialog box.

Stefan Blom