Check that the default font isn't set to the offending color. Go to Format, Cells and in the middle of the box you'll see a drop-down for Color. It should be set to Automatic, which seems to be Black (at least it is for me). If that's the problem, you can highlight the page (Click on the box above at the upper left Line 1 and the left of Column A) and set the default font for all cells. That's for all Excel versions up to 2007. I don't have 2007 on the machine I'm using now, and I don't recall the exact the menu route on that, but you can find the equivalent commands.