Selected Text is Black in Word

Question

I'm using Word Office 365, Windows 11, and today the selected text is highlighted in black now instead of the usual color. When googling I found that turning off windows speech recognitions stops this and I tried that but I do not have any speech recognition on at all. Any suggestions as to how I can go back to the previous color for selected text instead of black?

Answer 1

Hello @Sofia S, 

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

Based on your description, the issue might happen when Windows accessibility feature override Word’s default selection color. For my recommendation, kindly following these steps to check if it can resolve the issue: 

1. Try to repair and reset Office app 

Follow this instruction to repair and reset the Office apps: Repair an Office application - Microsoft Support, then restart your computer to check if it can resolve the issue 

2. Check Voice typing launcher is already turned off 
3. Press Win + H > Click on Settings gear icon > check if Voice typing launcher has been turned off.
   
4. Set contrast themes to None in Window Settings  Navigate to Settings > Personalization > Colors > Contrast themes > set it to “None” > Restart your device 
   
5. Add value to Registry Editor 

If all previous solution did not help, try these steps: 

• Press Windows + R, type Regedit, and hit Enter. 
• Go to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Word\Options 
• Look for a value called NoTranslucentSelection. 
• If it’s there, double-click and set it to 0. 
• If it’s not, right-click > New > DWORD (32-bit) Value, name it  NoTranslucentSelection, and set it to 0. 
• Restart your Office apps. 

Note: Please understand that as a forum moderator, my primary goal is to provide helpful guidance and support through general troubleshooting steps. While I don’t have access to internal systems or test devices required to resolve backend/account issues, I truly appreciate your understanding of these limitations.  

I hope you find this information helpful. If anything is unclear, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. 

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Answer 2

In similar Word for Microsoft 365 cases where the text selection suddenly changed to solid black and obscured the text, the effective fix was simply to restart Word, and if needed, reboot Windows. After a full restart, the selection highlight reverted to the normal color.

So for this issue on Windows 11 and Word 365:

1. Close all Office apps.
2. Restart the computer (not just sign out/in).
3. Open Word again and test text selection.

If the problem persists after a full reboot, use Help > Feedback > Report a problem in Word to send details to the Word team, as this behavior can be caused by a transient bug.

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References:

• In Word, when selecting text to copy or cut, the selection in the past was highlighted with grey shading. Somehow the shading has been changed to black, and completely blocks out the text. How do I change this back to a grey shading? - Microsoft Q&A