How to Remove Highlights from a Word Document

If you are stuck with a paragraph or a line of text with highlighting on and cannot remove it, this article will discuss how to remove highlights from a Word document. Highlighting can be applied to a block of text in two ways. Let’s look at the following paragraphs as an example:

Paragraph 1: I cannot remove highlights from my Word document. What should I do? So, I came here to get an answer and it looks like I am making some progress.

Paragraph 2: I have a feeling that I am about to find the solution to my problem of not being able to remove highlights from my entire paragraph.

In the first example, only a word is highlighted. This is known as Character Formatting. In the contrary, the entire second paragraph is highlighted. This is called Paragraph Formatting.

How to Remove Highlights from a Word Document

If you fall into the Character Formatting category, perform the following to remove the highlight:

• Click and drag your cursor to select the highlighted text.
• Click on the Text Highlight Color icon to remove the highlight.
• If this didn’t work, click on the Clear All Formatting icon to remove all formats from the selected word(s). Alternatively, you can press Ctrl + Spacebar to do the same.

Removing highlights from a paragraph is very similar. Simply, select the entire paragraph by clicking an dragging your cursor. Then click on the Text Highlight Color icon to remove the highlight. If this didn’t work, click on the Clear All Formatting icon to remove all formats from the selected paragraph. Alternatively, you can press Ctrl + Spacebar or Ctrl +q to do the same.

Is it possible to have a Word document where the highlighting simply cannot be removed?

Yes, it is possible. Word documents which have Restrict Editing on and have No Changes (Read Only) settings activated, you will not be able to remove the highlights unless you have the password to unlock the document. If you must work with such a document, try doing the following:

– Save the document as an OpenText document. This can be done by clicking on File > Save As and selecting OpenDocument Text from the Save as Type drop down options.

– Close and re-open the file.

– You will now notice that all restrictions for formatting have been removed. You can save the file back as a Word file now.