Office Word (2019): Selecting all elements in a document (including text boxes)

Frames can be wrapped but are in the same layer (not behind or in front). Tables can be wrapped, but are in the text layer. That is why Ctrl+A will reach them.

I recall a young Mick Jagger singing "You can't always get what you want!" I am sure he was not the first to say this.    

Please don't shoot the messenger! I am a fellow user trying to help you use the Office that is rather than the one that should be. This is how Word works. If you can't use a macro, then you are stuck with the user interface that is there. If you assign a rating to my response, please rate my response, rather than what Microsoft is doing to all of us! If you say that your question was not resolved by my response, you are telling Microsoft that you do not want me answering questions, not telling them that you are unhappy with their product.

The people who can make changes to Word seldom, if ever, read anything that is posted in this help forum.

You can use the Feedback mechanism in Office or post directly to UserVoice to let developers know what you want.

https://support.office.com/article/How-do-I-giv...

If you do, you can include a link to this thread. If you do post in UserVoice, please put a link to that post in this thread so others can more easily find it to vote for it.

See also https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/for...

You Can't Always Get What You Want

Hello,

My name is Charles Kenyon and I am an Independent Advisor in this forum . This forum is a user-to-user support forum. I am a fellow user with decades of experience using Microsoft Word. I have written extensively on using Word and have help articles on the Microsoft site.

Brief answer is that you do not.

If you use styles for formatting your text, including that in textboxes, you can modify the style and it will change in the textboxes as well as the body. Many styles are based on the normal style. A change to the normal style can change those that are based on it if the characteristic in the normal style (like language or typeface) is continued in the styles based on it.

If you need help with how to modify a style or how to see whether a given styles is based on normal, let me know and I can assist. In that case, a sample document would help me help you. If you want, save a sample document with the problem on OneDrive or Dropbox and paste a view link here. Here is more on why and how to post such a document so I or others here can help you. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/fo...

I hope this information helps.

I like to also provide this link about Ransomware even though it has nothing to do with your question:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/for...

Please let me know if you have any more questions or require further help.

You can ask for more help by replying to this post (Reply button below).

Stay well

1. You could use frames instead of text boxes. They have the advantage that a frame can be a part of a paragraph style's definition and a style can be applied with a keyboard shortcut. This requires no macros.

See:

http://wordfaqs.ssbarnhill.com/MarginalText.htm...

http://addbalance.com/word/frames_textboxes.htm...

A frame, unlike a textbox, is inside the document.

2. You could use single-cell tables instead of text boxes. They would also be captured by Ctrl+A selection or mouse drag selection.
3. If you must use textboxes, and are not willing to do what you want by modifying styles, one or more macros would be needed.

Again, a link to a sample problem document would help.

The only ways to change all the text box font colors are either manually one-by-one or with a macro.

The macro is simple:

Sub TextboxesAllBlack()

Dim shp As Shape 

For Each shp In ActiveDocument.Shapes 

    If shp.Type = msoTextBox Then 

        shp.TextFrame.TextRange.Font.ColorIndex = wdAuto 

    End If 

Next shp 

End Sub

The concepts here are

• Text boxes are members of the Shapes collection, along with pictures (except those that are inline with text), drawn shapes, and various other "floating" objects.
• The statements between the "For Each" and the "Next" are repeated as many times as it takes to work through the entire collection.
• The current shape's Type is checked to see whether it's a text box. The next statement is executed only if it is a text box.
• The shape's TextFrame.TextRange consists of all the text inside the box.
• The text's font color is set to wdAuto (the "Automatic" color in the color picker). That's black if the text box's background is white or a light color, or white if the background is dark.

I'll try to explain my case:

I'm a professional translator, so usually I translate a document (this is a draft translation) and then change the text color of the portions of the text that I'm certain are correct to green. And then little by little I modify the translation and turn the entire text in the document to green. Also, I very often use text boxes, since I think it's the only way to put text at random places when I'm translating some form (template) documents etc. And then at the end, I want to paint the entire text back to black colour, but I can only do CTRL + A on the normal text outside the text boxes. And then I have to select the text in each text box individually throughout the entire document and change it to black colour.

Do you have any ideas?