In MS Office you can select text and background colors as well as entire color schemes through the different themes.

From the Home tab, you can access the color controls for fonts through the "Font Color" tool in the Font tool-group, and the color for the background through the "Shading" tool in the Paragraph tool-group.

Font Color Picker

The Font Color tool can be accessed from the Home tab, in the "Font" group from the toolbar.

The icon is a capital A with a solid bar of color beneath it.

Simply click on one of the color swatches to apply that color as the font color to the currently selected text.

Font color picker in MS Word

Background Color Picker (Shading)

The Shading Color tool can be accessed from the Home tab, in the "Paragraph" group from the toolbar.

The icon is a bucket spilling paint, over a solid bar of color.

Click on one of the color swatches to apply that color as the background color for paragraphs or to the currently selected paragraph. Be careful, as you can apply different colors to snippets of text as well as to the entire paragraph of text.

Background or shading color picker in MS Word

Do NOT assume that the pre-designed themes will provide sufficient color contrast. It is important to verify and ensure that your font colors are providing sufficient contrast for the background colors.