Has Word added the ability to do a strike through line in a different colour yet?

Question

Has Word added the ability to do a strike through line in a different colour yet?

Leviticus Stroud 0

I found questions from 16 years ago asking for this feature, which is a legal requirement for some paperwork in some countries, but at the time this was not possible.

I'm presently writing a guidance document for my department on how to correctly fill in certain hand written documents, and I can't utilise any standard font system to do this. I've seen advice on using overlays of drawn lines, but these are not exactly suitable as they don't stay anchored to the specific words if any part of the document needs to be edited.

Has this been made possible yet, or do I need to find software from another vendor to achieve this?

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Answer recommended by moderator

Charles Kenyon 170.9K Volunteer Moderator

Use the Track Changes feature. You can get strikeout by deleting text with this turned on.

You can change the color of this markup.

https://www.addbalance.com/usersguide/track_changes.htm#Options

You can use the Document Compare feature to take your original document and compare the changed document to produce a new document with the markup.

https://www.addbalance.com/usersguide/track_changes.htm#Comparing_Documents

In answer to your direct question: No, Microsoft has not added any ability to change the color of strikethrough font formatting. I doubt that they will but if this is something important to you that using Track Changes does not solve, you should send in feedback.

Microsoft is not hearing about your problems from what you post here. You are discussing a problem with your fellow users here. We can give good advice about how to work with Word as it is and give suggestions for making it work properly.

Designers and their supervisors do see feedback. (You will almost certainly not get a direct response to that feedback but they do see it.)

Here is more about that:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/giving-feedback-on-microsoft-word-or-other/8df81a9b-84aa-46ef-bf88-24fb7fec96ba

I suggest using the public feedback portal so other users can see your feedback, comment and vote. If you want, you can post the URL of your feedback with your question here to lead others with the same problem to your feedback. Be the “squeaky wheel” that gets fixed!

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2 additional answers

Your answer

Answer 1

Dear Leviticus Stroud,

Thank you for posting your question on the Microsoft Q&A forum.

I understand that you’re preparing formal or legal documentation, especially where formatting is a compliance requirement, and elements like a strikethrough line must appear exactly as required and remain properly anchored to the text. I can see how having a different colored strike line would make your work clearer and more compliant.

At this time, however, in current versions of Microsoft Word, there is still no built-in option to apply a different color to the strikethrough line independently from the text color.

In Word:

The strikethrough line always inherits the font color.
There is no separate formatting control for “strikethrough colour.”

This means if the text is black, the strikethrough will also be black. If you change the text to red, the strikethrough becomes red as well.

Since you mentioned this is for formal/legal documentation and the line must stay anchored to specific words, one workaround you might consider is using an “In Line with Text” shape, which behaves more reliably than floating overlays:

Go to Insert > Shapes > Line
Draw the line across the word
Right-click the line > Wrap Text > In Line with Text
Set the line color as needed

When set to In Line with Text, the line behaves like a character in the paragraph, so it moves with edits more predictably than a floating object. However, it still will not automatically resize if the word length changes significantly, so it may require manual adjustment.

If this type of formatting is critical and frequently required in your department, you may need to have:

A document automation tool
A PDF editor with advanced markup controls
Or specialised legal drafting software designed for compliance-heavy workflows

In the meantime, Microsoft genuinely values customer feedback. I strongly encourage you to submit this suggestion through the Feedback Portal: https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/

This is the most direct way to let the product team know that this feature is needed, particularly for legal and compliance use cases. Feedback from professionals like you helps shape future improvements, and I also hope to see this capability introduced in a future version of Word.

I hope this information is helpful. If you have any additional questions or would like to explore other possible approaches, please feel free to let me know.

If this response resolves your issue, kindly click Accept Answer and consider upvoting. If you need further clarification, please click Comment, and I’ll be happy to assist further.

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

Answer 2

Word still does not provide a built‑in option to change the color of the font strikethrough itself. The standard strikethrough formatting (single or double) uses the current font color and cannot be set to a different color independently.

Available options related to strikethrough and change‑tracking formatting are:

Manual strikethrough formatting (single or double) via Home > Strikethrough or the Font dialog, which always uses the text’s font color.
Track Changes “Deletions” formatting, which defaults to strikethrough and lets the color be set (for the tracked change markup, not for ordinary strikethrough formatting). This is configured in the advanced Track Changes options, where deletions can be shown as strikethrough with a chosen color.

For static, non‑tracked text, Word does not currently support a differently colored strike line that remains anchored to the text in the way font formatting does. Workarounds such as drawing lines (via Insert > Shapes) exist but, as noted, they are shapes and not text formatting, so they do not behave like characters when editing.

To meet requirements that mandate a specific color for struck‑through content outside of Track Changes, alternative tools or workflows may be required.

References: