Removing shading from Comments/Markup bar in Word 2019

Question

I'd like to get rid of the grey shading behind the comments on the right-hand side of printed pages. Solutions have been posted before, including the following:

1. Click the Review tab (or ribbon or whatever the stupid thing is called).
2. In the Tracking area, click Show Markup. All the boxes are selected.
3. Uncheck Markup Area Highlight. No more grey box!!

Unfortunately, the above relates to an older version of Word and no longer works with with Word 2019, since there seems to be no "Markup Area Highlight" option any longer.

I'd rather not chew through toner unnecessarily, so to help save my expenses and the environment, can someone tell me where this function is now hidden, assuming it still exists? Or any other workaround?

To recap: I do NOT want to delete or hide comments - I just don't want the column containing the comments to be shaded.

Answer 1

Hello Martin_Purdy,     Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We appreciate that you've taken the time to post your concern here in Microsoft Community Forum.We understand that you need help on how to get rid of the grey shading behind the comments. Let’s check on this together and find ways to address this matter.

• To better assist you on this one, can you please provide us a photo or a sample photo where it shows a grey shading on the comment section?

We look forward to your response.   

Sincerely,Juhn Jac,Consumer M365 Forum Moderator

Answer 2

Thanks for your reply. I'm surprised this appears to be new to you - it's been a standard feature of Word for quite some years now. Here's a screenshot of a print preview - when it actually prints it can be a lot darker than this. See further comment in the screenshot.

Answer 3

Hello Martin_Purdy,    

Thank you for responding back here.

I'll be consulting this to our internal teams for their suggestions and recommendations and I'll get back to you as soon as I get an updates from them.

Thank you for understanding!

Sincerely,        Juhn Jac,Consumer M365 Forum Moderator

Answer 4

As far as I know, you can't change the Markup area color in recent versions of Word. :-(

What you can do is what I believe that you do not want to do: display all revisions inline. On the Review tab, click Show Markup > Balloons > Show All Revisions Inline. This will also hide the whole Markup area.

Answer 5

Thanks, that's disappointing, as I need the comments visible on the printed final, not just an inline marker showing a comment exists. It would be nice if Microsoft could adopt a "greener" approach to this - save toner, save waste (and save users money!)