How to get Word to automatically remove or apply a specific highlight color?

Question

Hello,

I'm accessing a public, collaboratively made document that features tons of hideous highliting patterns, and I want to clean it up for personal use. However, it seems Word is only able to automatically change and/or remove the color of the FONT, not the color of the highlight. That is, I can get Word to automatically change all "green fonted" words to "red fonted", or remove just the "green fonted" words, while keeping the other colors:

Before: Lorem ipsum lorem ipsum lorem ipsum rabble rabble rabble

After: Lorem ipsum lorem ipsum lorem ipsum rabble rabble rabble

Before: Lorem ipsum lorem ipsum lorem ipsum rabble rabble rabble

After: Lorem ipsum lorem ipsum lorem ipsum rabble rabble rabble

But what I want to change is the highlight, not the font color. In other words (pun intended), I want Word to automatically find specific highlight colors and either replace or remove those colors. See the picture below because this question form doesn't have the highlight feature:

Is Word able to do this highlight change/removal on its own? Or do I have to use a macro? If so, can anybody please point me to a ready-made macro that does that? Pretty please? Ohpleaseohpleaseohplease? With a cherry on top?

Of course, I'd rather just remove all those highlights because they look hideous. However, highlighting is the way the collaborators used to convey specific information, and what I need is precisely that information, so a simple highlight removal would eliminate that information as well.

Michel

Answer 1

Hi!

I'll try to help you.

I know this is frustrating, but Unfortunately it is not possible to find a specific reslce. Word is only able to find the highlighted text in a general way.

All best!

Answer 2

After you install the following macro, click on any text that has a highlight color you want to remove (that is, change to "No color") and run the macro.

Sub RemoveOneHighlight() 

    Dim HLColor As WdColorIndex 

    Dim rg As Range 

    HLColor = Selection.Range.HighlightColorIndex 

    If HLColor <> wdNoHighlight Then 

        Set rg = ActiveDocument.Range 

        With rg.Find 

            .Highlight = HLColor 

            .Wrap = wdFindStop 

            While .Execute 

                If rg.HighlightColorIndex = HLColor Then 

                    rg.HighlightColorIndex = wdNoHighlight 

                End If 

                rg.Collapse wdCollapseEnd 

            Wend 

        End With 

    Else 

        MsgBox "Place the cursor on text that has the highlight to remove." 

    End If 

End Sub

It would be possible to write a macro that changes the selected color to any other available highlight color, but that would need a userform to let you choose both colors. There isn't a good way to post a userform in this forum, but post back if you need that kind of macro and I'll put it on my website for download.