Finding Text Using a Specific Highlighting Color

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated June 19, 2023)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021

Amir uses different highlighting colors throughout his documents. When he uses Find and Replace to find highlighted text, it treats all highlighting colors the same. Amir would like, specifically, to use Find and Replace to locate only text highlighted in yellow, having it ignore any other highlighting color used in the document.

Before getting into how to possibly do this, it is important to discuss terms for a moment. When using the term "highlighting color," some people think that is referring to the color applied to some particular text; it is not. Highlighting doesn't change the font's color. Highlighting is accomplished by using the Text Highlight Color tool, which is available in the Font group on the Home tab of the ribbon. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. Word allows you to highlight text using different colors.

When you use the Find and Replace dialog box, you can specify that you want to search for text that is highlighted. (Put the insertion point in the Find box, click Format, then click Highlight.) When you click on Find Next, Word selects the next highlighted text, regardless of the color used to highlight that text. In other words, you cannot specify that you only want to find text highlighted in yellow or blue or green or any other color; it is all treated the same.

We haven't been able to find any reliable way around this. Some information we've seen indicates that Word will only find whatever highlight color is specified in the Text Highlight Color tool, but this is not true. Other folks have indicated that if you select some highlighted text (that is highlighted with the color you want to find) before displaying the Find and Replace dialog box, only that highlight color will be found when you click Find Next. This, too, is not true. In all cases, Find Next will find any highlighted text, irrespective of color used for highlighting.

The only way around this is to use a macro to do the finding. VBA allows you to detect the color used to highlight text, which is why this approach will work. The following macro uses Find and Replace to do the finding, but then it checks to see what the HighlightColorIndex property is for what was found. If it is equal to wdYellow (an enumeration for the color yellow), then the text is selected and the macro is exited.

Sub FindNextYellow()
    With Selection.Find
        .ClearFormatting
        .Replacement.ClearFormatting
        .Text = ""
        .MatchWildcards = False
        .Forward = True
        .Wrap = wdFindContinue
        .Highlight = True
        Do
            .Execute
        Loop Until Selection.Range.HighlightColorIndex = wdYellow _
          Or Not .Found
        Selection.Range.Select
    End With
End Sub

You can search for different colors simply by changing the wdYellow enumeration to the enumeration for whatever color you want.

Note:

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WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (13552) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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What is four more than 3?

2021-05-21 06:52:23

Semacovschi Constantin Dorin

Thanks!

2020-07-16 04:09:36

PeterH

Thanks a lot for a great idea! We receive documents from multiple authors, so I modified it slightly to show all highlights regardless the color used, because in addition to yellow color occasionally also other bright colors like green, cyan, red are used, so my condition is general - background is not white - I hope it will not be understood as politically incorrect :-( User can customize quick access toolbar with a button to trigger FindYellow macro to simplify its usage. And if whole doc is clear, it displays a message, otherwise user cannot be sure whether macro really did something. Stay safe, Peter.

Sub FindYellow()
'
' FindYellow Macro
'
'
With Selection.Find
.ClearFormatting
.Replacement.ClearFormatting
.Text = ""
.MatchWildcards = False
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Highlight = True
Do
.Execute

Loop Until Selection.Range.HighlightColorIndex <> wdWhite _
Or Not .Found
If Not .Found Then MsgBox ("All clear - no highlight found")

Selection.Range.Select
End With
End Sub

2020-04-28 17:21:07

Clyde

When I search for upper case 'S', Word finds all of them and highlights them in yellow. How do I change that yellow to red or blue? (I do not want to change the actual text, just the highlight for a search).

2019-05-21 10:24:12

Claire

Hi Allen

Thanks for doing that. Unfortunately, I can't get it to work; it zooms through the document at high speed, finding every instance of every highlighted text, correct colour or not and then breaks out of the macro at the end. I can't edit the bits I want to edit. Any thoughts, please?

Thank you

2018-12-17 11:25:25

Lucas

Hi Allen,
Thanks for the great tip.

I tried running your code and the problem is, if the given highlighted color I am searching for doesn't exist in the document, the code seems to search through the document 2 times and then goes into an infinite loop.

I tried setting .Wrap = wdFindStop but this doesn't seem to work with Selection.Find only Range.Find
I tried setting .Wrap = wdFindAsk and it does still prompt so the end of the document is being reached.

The Or Not .Found does not seem to be triggering either. It always remains =True.
I also tried using While .Found = True but that never turns to false either for some reason and continues to loop.

Can you please assist me with getting the .Find to exit once the end of the document is reached.

Thanks
Lucas

2018-12-17 06:43:26

Lucas

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