5 Ways to Remove Background Color From Text in Word
Applying a background color to text is a neat way to highlight important information in your Word documents. But, it does disturb the cleaner look of a document. Whether the highlight was inherited from copied text or accidentally applied while working on the document, you can easily remove it. This guide covers several methods to remove the background color from text inMicrosoft Word for Macor Windows.
Table of Contents
1. Use the Text Highlighter Tool
Using the text highlighter tool in Microsoft Word is the easiest way to add or remove background color from your text. Here’s how to unhighlight text in your Word document.
1.Open your Word document and select the text from which you want to remove highlights. To select all text, pressControl + Akeyboard shortcut.
2.Select theHometab at the top. Then, click the tiny arrow next to theText Highlight Coloricon and chooseNo Colorfrom the resulting menu.
2. Remove the Shading Color
If you can’t remove background color from your text using the highlighter tool, your paragraph or section likely has some form of shading applied to it rather than text highlight. In that case, you can use these steps to remove shading from text in your Word document.
1.Open your Word document. Select the text from which you want to remove the shading.
2.Select theHometab at the top. In theParagraphsection, click the tiny arrow next to theShadingicon and selectNo Colorfrom the menu that appears.
3. Use the Control + Space Keyboard Shortcut
Using the Ctrl + Space keyboard shortcut in Microsoft Word is the quickest way to remove all formatting from your text, including text highlights. Note that this method is not useful if you wish to retain thefont style, color, effect, and other formatting characteristics.
Open your Word document and select the text with the background color. Then, press theControl + Spacekeyboard shortcut to remove the highlight. Alternatively, you can head over to theHometab and click on theFonticon to get theClear All Formattingbutton.
4. Paste as Unformatted Text
When you copy text into a Word document, it can carry over formatting, including background color. To prevent this from happening, you can paste your text unformatted. This way, you won’t need to manually remove the gray background color from the copied text in your Word document. Here’s how to do it.
1.Open your Word document and select the text from which you want to remove the background color. Then, pressControl + Xkeyboard shortcut to cut the text.
2.Head to theHometab, click the arrow under thePastebutton and choosePaste Special.
3.SelectUnformatted Textand hitOK.
Tip:In Word, you can useControl + Shift + Vkeyboard shortcut instead ofControl+ Vto paste text without formatting.
5. Use the Find and Replace Tool
While the above methods are straightforward for removing background color from only a few sentences or paragraphs, they may not be efficient forlong Word documents. In such cases, you can use the Find and Replace tool in Word to remove background color from text. Here’s how:
1.Open your Word document and pressControl + Hkeyboard shortcut to access the Find and Replace tool. In theReplacetab, click theMorebutton.
2.Click theFind whatfield and leave it blank. Then, click theFormatbutton at the bottom left corner and chooseHighlight.
3.Click theReplace withfield and leave it blank. Then, click theFormatbutton at the bottom and selectHighlight.
4.Click theFormatbutton one more time and selectHighlight.
5.Finally, click theReplace Allbutton and then clickOKto continue.
Microsoft Word will remove highlights from all the text in your document.
Simplify to Amplify
Highlighting text may be effective for emphasizing a point. But if an entire paragraph or page full of text is highlighted, it looks like an eyesore. If you goof up while trying to remove highlights, don’t sweat it. Just hitthe Control + Zkeyboard shortcut to undo the unintended removal.
Pankil Shah
Pankil is a Civil Engineer by profession who started his journey as a writer back in 2016. He joined TechWiser in March 2021 as a freelance writer to cover buying guides, explainers, and tips & tricks for Android, iOS, Windows, and Web.
