When Deena is using Find and Replace, Word highlights the found word in gray and she often has a hard time locating it in the text, especially if the finding has skipped far ahead of the last highlighted word. Deena would like to have a bright-colored highlight (or some other means) that is easily located and wonders if that is possible.
Exactly how Word highlights "found text" varies based on a number of factors. First, if you are using the regular Find option, when you press Ctrl+F, Word displays the Navigation pane at the left of the document and allows you to type in something you want to find in the document. Doing so causes Word to highlight all occurrences of that text in your document. That text is highlighted in yellow.
If, however, you are using the advanced Find option, then not all instances are highlighted. When you step through the instances of the found text, they are highlighted in a blue or some other lighter color that is consistent with whatever color theme you have selected for your system. (More on that in a moment.) You can cause Word to use the higher-contrast yellow for what it finds by instructing it to highlight whatever you are searching for. Follow these steps:
Figure 1. The Find tab of the Find and Replace dialog box.
At this point, all instances of the text you want are highlighted in the document and they are easy to see because of the yellow highlighting. You can navigate easily through the document and the highlighting remains until you do something to edit the text in any way.
If you want to change the actual color used to highlight selected items (like found text), then you'll need to make a change to the color theme used by Windows. (This is not a change in Word, but a change in Windows itself.) By making the change, you can modify the color used to mark found text when stepping through instances using the advanced Find option; this won't affect the color used by a simple Find operation or when you rely on Reading Highlight.
If you want to change the appropriate color in Windows 7, you can follow these steps:
Figure 2. The Window Color and Appearance dialog box.
If you are using Vista, follow these steps instead:
If you are using Windows 8 your options for setting the color are quite a bit more limited. In fact, you'll need to change to a funky, clunky high-contrast color theme in order to change the selection color. Follow these steps:
Figure 3. The Color and Appearance settings.
Figure 4. The Color dialog box.
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2020-08-12 13:56:39
Steve Brudney
Dear Mr. Wyatt, please help me if you would. I always use Ctrl + F to find occurrences of a word. All the sudden it is highlighting entire paragraphs, not just a single word. I think I hit something in the top row on my keyboard to make this happen but am not sure. Also, there's now a tiny black wedge in the left margin pointing to the paragraph and I don't know what it is.
Please advise,
Steve Brudney
2020-05-04 03:57:05
Susan
I'm using Microsoft 365 (Windows). I can't speak to previous versions, but the highlight color used for Reading Highlight is whatever color I have selected for "Text Highlight Color" on the Home tab.
2014-08-05 03:22:58
Or
Hi,
In the last line of the document you write "This tip (13189) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, and 2013. ".
I would recommend to write this also at the beginning of the tip.
Thanks,
Or
2014-08-04 03:59:29
balthamossa2b
In W8 isn't there a registry value you can change for the highlight color directly? I kind of remeber reading about it when I was customizing my desktop, but I don't remember very well.
And how about the Accesibility options? You could always use the High Contrast option.
...Or manually change the color display number, however ugly Windows will get.
2014-08-02 17:01:16
Linda
I didn't realize how funky the settings would be. Fortunately, I must not have saved the new settings or if did something right while trying to fix the problem; everything has returned to its usual look, for which I'm grateful
Thanks for your tips.
2014-08-02 14:05:04
awyatt
Linda:
Yep. I know. That's why I said "you'll need to change to a funky, clunky high-contrast color theme." Personally, I don't find it acceptable, but it is the only way I can find that Microsoft allows that particular setting to be changed in Windows 8.
-Allen
2014-08-02 13:51:07
Linda
I have Windows 8. I'm not happy with the results from following these steps. For one thing, my Word screen looks different. In fact all of my screens are different. In short, the steps not only changed colors but the look of Word, my home page, my e-mail page. For example, in Word, the office button in the top left corner is no longer in color but rather a circle with a black and white graphic in the the shape of the office button. Also, the icons on the tool bar look different. I suspect the problem is with the high-contrast theme, but I don't know what to do. What I wonder is if there's a way to return to the default look for screens.
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