John, this isn’t just a "beginner" or "aged" issue! What they DON’T tell you in any of those books is that in order to get the palette well as big as the ones shown, the resolution of the monitor has to be set at 1024 X 768 or even higher. If, like me, you run yours at a lower res, the well will be much smaller in comparison. And there’s no way to get around that. I have a Mac and am able to set mine at kind of an odd size (832X624) which is just enough higher so that it’s workable for me. If you’ve got yours set at 800X600, there may be other parts of Elements that don’t display correctly, too. I think it’s the Print Preview screen some people have trouble with. Changing the res is the only way to get around this I’m afraid.
But welcome to the forum, where you can whine about this issue with some of the others if you’d like! 🙂
John, I finally gave into changing the resolution of the monitor as Beth suggested. I wear trifocals,but had glasses made with just the two shorter focal lenghts "computer glasses" they are called. That helps! But I did just discover that if you right click on the palette tabs you can rearrange them. That might help you in keeping ones you use most in positions that are easier to locate using the smaller resolution.
Just an idea…but I have gotten used to things being smaller with the higher resolution, even though I didn’t think I could. Dorothy