This browser is no longer supported.
Upgrade to Microsoft Edge to take advantage of the latest features, security updates, and technical support.
![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(128, 8%, 22%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3EA%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Highlights in Word 2010
I cannot remove highlights from Word 2010 documents.
A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
For what it's worth, Ctrl+SpaceBar clears direct character formatting, and Ctrl+Q clears direct paragraph formatting applied to text.
In other words, it seems as if some sort of character formatting was applied to your text.
It sounds like shading was applied to a part of a paragraph. It is then character formatting and Ctrl+spacebar will clear it. If shading is applied to the entire paragraph, it's paragraph formatting. Ctrl+spacebar won't remove it, but Ctrl+q will.
Pam
The replies above are useless for this very common complaint. Here's how to solve the problem:
PCs: Copy the highlighted text. Paste it with the icon that has the arrow on it. This preserves formatting EXCEPT highlighting is removed.
Macs: Copy the highlighted text. Use "Paste Preserving Formatting". Same result as above.
MICROSOFT: Get on the stick and address this pernicious bug! Remove Highlighting should be made to work. The product looks ridiculous otherwise. It's such an impressive product otherwise. Please get rid of this silliness.
You seem to have a lot of questions not related to the subject of the original post. It would be better for you to start a new thread and ask your specific questions about, for example, AutoText entries (which basically are created the same way as in past versions, using Alt+F3).
Some of the previous posts seem to suggest that the problem arises primarily when highlighting has been applied in a previous version of Word. Kind of like trying to remove paint after it's dried, I guess. I confess my tests were limited--applying highlight and immediately removing it--since I don't normally use this feature.
One thing you might try is whether you can remove highlighting with the Replace dialog. Click More to expand the dialog, then, in the "Find what" box, use Format | Highlight. In the "Replace with" box, you have to use Format | Highlight twice so that it reads "Format: Not Highlight." You can either Replace All to remove all highlighting, or step through to find and replace just the specific highlights you want to remove.