Changing Existing Highlighting

Summary: If you have a document with lots of existing highlighting, you might want to change it all to a different color. Word makes this easy by using a rather arcane portion of the Find and Replace dialog box. (This tip works with Microsoft Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, and Word 2003.)

Do you have a document that has lots of highlighting already applied in it? Do you want to change all that highlighting from the current color to a different color? If you answered yes to these questions, you can use the find and replace capabilities of Word to achieve the desired results. Follow these steps:

Use the Highlight tool to specify the color you want as the "after" color; the one you want to change to. (Click the drop-down arrow at the right of the Highlight tool and select the color you want.)
Press Ctrl+H to display the Replace tab of the Find and Replace dialog box. (Click here to see a related figure.)
With the insertion point in the Find What box, click Format | Highlight. (You may need to click the More button to see the Format button.)
With the insertion point in the Replace With box, again click Format | Highlight.
Click Replace All.

All of the highlighting in the document should change to whatever color you selected in step 1.

Tip #328 applies to Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

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Changing Existing Highlighting