Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Office 365. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Controlling Field Shading.
Normally, when you either select a field or move the insertion point into a field, Word highlights the entire field or result of the field. This is done so you can tell you are working in a field. Sometimes you may find this distracting, however. If you want to change the way that Word handles field shading, follow these steps:
Figure 1. The Advanced options of the Word Options dialog box.
There are three options you can specify in step 3. The default is When Selected, which simply means that the field is shaded when it is selected, or you place the insertion point within the field. If you set the option to Never, then fields are never shaded, and (conversely) Always specifies that they are always shaded.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (6107) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Office 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Controlling Field Shading.
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2019-09-13 13:58:18
When you activate restricted permissions through the review pane the grey shading of the text form fields is removed. How do you get them back? The method above does not work on these type of fields.
2019-08-29 04:54:23
Hip
this does not seem to work on Word for MAC! :-(
Got a version of Word that uses the ribbon interface (Word 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Word, visit our WordTips site focusing on the menu interface.
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Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Office 365. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: 
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