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Word - find/replace highlighted text with shaded text AND preserve all other formatting?

Super User Asked on December 9, 2021

I create new documents from source material that others send me, and use Word’s built-in gray highlighting to indicate text in the source file that’s been dealt with in the new document (equivalent to “crossing it off”).

Onscreen, I can still easily read the text; the highlighting does not interfere with legibility. However, when printed, the highlighting is so dark that it interferes with legibility.

Going forward, I will use shading (not highlighting) to get a lighter gray background. In the meantime, I have several documents to be printed. Using find/replace is the obvious solution, but my experiments with it are failing.

In Word 2010 you cannot replace highlighting with shading; you can only replace highlighting with highlighting. The obvious solution to that barrier is to create a new style with shaded text.

But that solution does not work because the new style replaces all of the text formatting (indents, etc.), not just the highlighting.

I’ve tried variations of creating a new style with shading based on normal, based on no style, and (for example) a new style based on the custom “Text” style that is sometimes used.

Can what I want to do–replace highlighting with shading while leaving all else “as is”–be accomplished with find/replace in just one to a few steps? I.e., if it takes a few passes of find/replace, that’s ok.

If this problem is beyond a find/replace capability, then how else can I accomplish it?

Note: Replacing the gray highlighting with another highlighting color is not a solution. Nor is changing the text color.

One Answer

This is the solution that finally worked for me.

  1. Select some text that has the unwanted shading.
  2. Create a new character style based on that text and name it "NEWshading."
  3. Select the now-styled text from Step 1.
  4. Remove the highlighting from that text.
  5. Update the style to match the non-highlighted text.
  6. Use Find to search for specific words or phrases that have been highlighted.
  7. Apply the _NEWshading style where needed.

Important: To avoid unwanted surprises, step through each instance; do not use "Replace All." For example, if you've applied italics rather than emphasis, then italics could be unintentionally removed.

Answered by RJo on December 9, 2021

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