Microsoft Word for Mac: text highlighting too "light"

Anonymous
2020-01-02T16:01:02+00:00

Hi, 

I had an Office 365 Personal subscription active on my Macbook Air since November 2019, then I decided to switch and buy the Office Home & Student 2019 version a few weeks after the expiration date.

Right after the subscription ended, I started to see the highlighting of the text in Microsoft Word really light, as you can see from the image below:

Instead of the normal colour, much darker. Everything was working fine until the subscription expired and I thought that the issue was related to the expiration of the subscription, but when I purchase and installed the Office Home & Student 2019 version nothing changed.

I tried to delete completely all files from the previous installation of MS Word, also tried to edit the colour in Preferences > Highlight colour - but nothing changed in Word. 

Other apps, web browser or text editors works fine and the colour is "normal", only in Word the highlighting is too "light".

Is there a way to solve this issue?

Thank you in advance for your help.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2020-08-22T18:35:51+00:00

I’m not the originator to this issue but i do know the solution. On your Mac go to: System Preferences - Accessibility - Display. There should be a slider bar move it all to the left. For some reason this setting was changed. Once you’ve moved it to normal, Word highlighting works.

Thanks for this suggestion, I have tried this fix and it does change the contrast on most elements of the computer display, but does not change the highlighting in Word for Mac which is almost invisible. 

It is very strange. I'm on 16.40 like you are and when I made the change (I do not know how the slider was originally moved) and moved the slider to the normal position the highlighting came back. A couple of factors in my case:

  • I had the older version of MS Office 2016 for Mac which had no problems with highlighting
  • I upgraded my MacBook Pro Mid 2015 to Catalina
  • I then bought a license for MS Office 2019 for Mac and encountered the highlighting contrast issue. And I found that the System Preference/Accessibility/Display had been moved off of normal. This was a solution from another user to move it back
  • Moving the slider to normal the problem was instantly solved.

So the question when you tried the fix was your slider off of Normal? If not then my solution is not the same for your bug. But if it was off of normal try a reboot (if you haven't already) and see if that works.

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  1. Anonymous
    2020-12-19T22:11:56+00:00

    It is December 18, 2020 and I have the most up-to-date version of Microsoft Word / Office Suite Version 16.43

    Apparently all the people complaining about the too-light highlighting colour have not been acknowledged. Because this problem persists. Seems to have become a problem for me with the latest updates!!

    I tried every position on the color wheel -- yet the highlighting persists in being so faint it's hard to tell whether I've selected what I wanted to select. This is VERY annoying and makes doing detailed cut & paste work nearly impossible.

    Has anyone got any updates on how to fix -- or even, why this has been adjusted to be so user-unfriendly?

    I also had this problem. Please check my answer that worked for me. I'm not the originator of the solution, but it has worked.

    https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/microsoft-word-for-mac-text-highlighting-too-light/109ba621-4598-4c11-b367-8d02aa7864ca?page=5

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-11-24T20:20:48+00:00

    My slider was slightly off of left, but putting it all the way to the left did not make the Word highlight as dark as it is other places. It seems to be a bug with the latest version Word 2019/Microsoft 365

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-11-18T16:30:24+00:00

    In my case the System Preferences trick did work (thanks!), but with some modifications.

    When I checked my SysPrefs settings, the Display contrast was already set to Normal (all the way left) and highlighting was near invisible in Word.  Moving the slider all the way right and back left again made the highlight more visible but as others have noticed it is still not quite as visible as Powerpoint.

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-08-31T15:19:57+00:00

    It worked. Awesome and thank you

    What worked? The slider? It worked for me partially. highlighting was more visible, but a duller yellow color. It is supposed to be a brighter yellow. Also, as I noted, I need the contrast to be higher (thus the slider bar to be moved over to the right) for my poor old eyes.

    Divingdoc

    Let me start out with a disclaimer that I am not trained in Assistive Technology but I have some knowledge. I also have a visual disability and I'm older. Maybe we have a lot in common. The second disclaimer is that I am only talking about macOS 10.15.6 Catalina and MS Word for Mac 2019. Controlling your display on your laptop or computer through the macOS is different than controlling how fields display in MS Word. Because of your statement I believe your issue lies within the macOS System Preferences and within the Accessibility Settings.

    I would advise you to go back into the Accessibility settings under display and turn on/off some features and see how that works for you. For example:

    • Use the setting to invert colors. This displays a very high contrast setting and may help you in multiple places, with Word, Websites etc.
    • Or use the setting Increase Contrast (I still have the slider all the way to the left) and there was an increase in contrast.

    I have noticed that my proposed fix does work for some people and not for others or just somewhat like in your case.

    Here's what I had a problem with (only with my version of MS Word). My highlight setting with MS Word was set at NO COLOR. If you have any other setting this fix may or may not help. I also discovered in my System Preferences that for some reason (not my doing) under Accessibility/Display that the slider had been moved 1 setting to the right. Moving it to the left solved my problem immediately. Finally if you still have problems and you find that with your disability you may need further help, and if you live in the United States, you should contact your Center for Independent Living. They are located in all 50 states and territories and provide services for people with disabilities for no cost. https://acl.gov/programs/centers-independent-living/list-cils-and-spils

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