Making Highlighting Disappear when Typing

When James applies a highlight color (such as yellow) to a word, the background around that word turns yellow. When he then selects that highlighted word and types a new word over it, the new word appears, but the yellow highlighting remains. To get rid of the yellow highlighting, he must select the word again and "unhighlight" it. Since James has to do this hundreds of times a day, it gets old. He wonders if there is a way to make the highlighting disappear when selecting and typing over a word.

The answer to this depends on the version of Word you are using.

Older Versions of Word

If you are using an older version of Word, then there is no easy way to do this. The reason has to do with your text and the highlighting being on different layers of the document. When you select some highlighted text and start typing, then you are affecting only the layer on which your text resides; the layer on which the highlighting resides is not affected.

There are a few workarounds you can try out, though. One is to simply press the Delete key after you select your text and before you start typing. This does affect both layers, and you can immediately begin typing without the lingering highlight.

A second approach is to use Word's shortcut key that controls highlighting: Ctrl+Alt+H. This shortcut toggles the highlight on whatever text is selected, so it is a quick way to turn the highlight on and off. The drawback to this approach is that pressing Ctrl+Alt+H also unselects whatever text you previously selected, so you will again need to select it before you start typing.

More Recent Versions of Word

In the most recent versions of Word, the answer depends on how you select your text:

• If you select everything that was previously highlighted and start typing, then the highlighting is removed.
• If you select just a portion of the highlighted text and start typing, then what you type will also be highlighted.
• If you select unhighlighted text and some text that is highlighted (a mix of text, with the first part not highlighted) and start typing, then the highlighting is removed.
• If you select highlighted text and some text that is unhighlighted (a mix of text, with the first part highlighted) and start typing, then what you type is also highlighted.

As in older versions, you can also use the Ctrl+Alt+H approach, but it has the same drawback—whatever you previously had selected is automatically unselected after pressing Ctrl+Alt+H.

More Flexibility

If you want the greatest flexibility, it might be beneficial to use a macro. The purpose of the macro would be to replace the Ctrl+Alt+H approach, but not to unselect the previously selected text. This short macro will work perfectly for this purpose:

Sub RemoveHighlight()
    Options.DefaultHighlightColorIndex = wdNoHighlight
    Selection.Range.HighlightColorIndex = wdNoHighlight
End Sub

Assign this macro to a shortcut key. Then, when you select your highlighted text, you can press the shortcut key and the highlighting is removed from the selected text. You can then begin typing, and the highlighting is not applied to the new text.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (13574) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, 2024, and Word in Microsoft 365.