Can’t remove Highlights or Shading from Word document

Are you unable to remove highlights and shading from a Word document on Windows PC? If so, this post will interest you.

Highlights and Shading are two key features in Word that enables users to put emphasis on an important text or phrase in a document. While highlights can be applied to text in a few specific colors, you can apply shading in any color. Now, formatting content in Word can be tricky sometimes. As reported by some users, they just can’t remove highlights or shading from the text in Word.

How do I remove shaded text in Word?

Removing shaded text in Word is very easy. You can select the text from where you want to remove shading and then press Ctrl+Q hotkey. Or, just press the Shading option from the Home tab and set it to No Color. Similarly, you can choose No Color as Text Highlight Color to clear highlights from a text.

Why won’t highlighting go away in Word?

If you can remove the highlights in Microsoft Word, it might be the case that your formatting options are not configured correctly. You might have set some background color for your text which is why the text appears to be highlighted even when the highlights are removed. Apart from that, your highlight settings might be incorrectly configured, and thus the issue. Check if the Text Highlight Color option is set to No Color or not. If not, you will likely experience this problem.

Now, if you are one of the affected users who just can clear highlights or shading from a selected text in a Word document, this post will help you. Here, we will be sharing multiple methods using which you can remove highlights and shading from a Word document. So, without much ado, let us check out these methods.

Can’t Remove Highlights or Shading from Word document

If you are unable to remove highlights or shading from a document in Microsoft Word on Windows 11/10, here are the methods you can use to fix the issue:

1. Try using the Clear Formatting option.
2. Choose the No Color option for highlighting.
3. Set the background color to No Color.
4. Cut the text and paste it back into the document.
5. Use VBA Code to clear highlights and shading from a Word document.

1] Try using the Clear All Formatting option

If you cannot remove highlights or shading from a Word document, you can first use the Clear All Formatting option. It will clear all the formatting done to the selected text including highlights. So, try this option and see if it works for you. Here’s how:

• First, open the problematic document in Word.
• Now, select the highlighted or shaded text from where you want to remove highlights.
• Next, go to the Home tab and click the Clear All Formatting button (A shaped icon with an eraser).

Check if the highlights are removed from your Word document or not. If the problem remains the same, you can use the next method to clear highlights in Word.

2] Choose the No Color option for highlighting

Another method to clear highlights from a Word document is to select the No Color option for highlighting. It is easy and quick. To use this method, select the highlighted text, move to the Home tab, and click on the Text Highlight Color drop-down button. Next, click on the No Color option as shown in the above screenshot. It will then remove the highlights from the chosen text.

Read: Oops, there was a problem with Dictation error in Word.

3] Set the background color to No Color

If you want to clear shading in a Word document, you can simply set the background color of the text to No Color. This way the shading will be removed from the text. However, the highlights will remain. So, if you want to remove highlights, try some other method from this post.

For removing shading from a document in Word, select the shaded text and move to the Home tab. Now, press the Shading drop-down button and then select the No Color option. You can also use the Ctrl+Q shortcut key to quickly remove shading from a selected text.

See: You can’t make this change because the selection is locked Word error.

4] Cut the text and paste it back into the document

Another method to remove highlights or shading from the text in a Word document is to use the cut-and-paste method. You can simply cut the highlighted text and paste the unformatted text back into the document. Doing so will remove highlights if you are unable to clear highlights using the above methods. Here’s how you can apply this method:

First, select the highlighted or shaded text and then press the Ctrl + X hotkey to cut the chosen text. Now, place the cursor where you want to keep the text in the document and go to the Home tab.

After that, click on the Paste > Paste Special option. Alternatively, you can also press the Ctrl + Alt + V hotkey to select the Paste Special option. Next, in the opened dialog window, choose the Unformatted Text option and click on the OK button. This will clear the highlights or shading and paste the text without any formatting.

If this method worked, you can set up the Default Paste option so that you don’t have to repeat the above steps when cutting and pasting text in the same document. The steps to do so are as follows:

• First, go to the Home tab and click on the Paste drop-down button.
• Now, click on the Set Default Paste option.
• In the opened Word Options window, set the Pasting within the same document option to Keep Text Only.
• If required, you can also set the Pasting between documents option to Keep Text Only.
• When done, press the OK button to save changes.

If this doesn’t help, we have one more solution using which you can clear highlights and shading in a Word document. So, move on to the next and last method.

Read: How to create an Envelope in Word and get it printed

5] Use VBA Code to clear highlights and shading from a Word document

You can also use a VBA code to quickly clear highlights and shading from a Word document. To do that, you can follow the below steps:

First, open the Word document from where you want to remove the highlights and shading. Now, go to the Developer tab and click on the Visual Basics option. Next, in the opened window, click on the Insert > Module option and then enter the below code:

Sub RemoveShadingandHighlights()
Selection.Font.Shading.Texture = wdTextureNone
Selection.Shading.BackgroundPatternColor = wdColorWhite
Selection.Shading.ForegroundPatternColor = wdColorWhite
Selection.Range.HighlightColorIndex = wdNoHighlight
End Sub

Once done, save the code and exit the window.

Next, select all or specific text from where you want to remove shading and highlights. And then, go to the Developer tab and click on the Macros option. After that, select the RemoveShadingandHighlights macro and press the Run button to clear the shading and highlighting in a Word document.

This VBA code is taken from the official Microsoft forum here.

If you want to remove highlights from an entire document, you can use another VBA code. Just follow the above steps and enter the below code:

Sub unHighLight()
Dim StoryRange As Range
For Each StoryRange In ActiveDocument.StoryRanges
StoryRange.HighlightColorIndex = wdNoHighlight
Next StoryRange
End Sub

This code can be run the same way we have mentioned above. You can find this VBA code here.

I hope this helps!

Now read: Word cannot save or create this file – Normal.dotm Error.