Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Turning Off Highlighter Display.

Turning Off Highlighter Display

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated August 30, 2025)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


The highlighter tool in Word is helpful for when you are developing and editing your manuscript. There may be times, however, when you want to print a "clean" version of your manuscript, without the marks. You could, of course, remove all the highlighting marks and then reapply them after printing, but that would be very tedious. Instead, you can follow these steps to suppress the display of the highlighting you previously applied to text:

  1. Choose Options from the Tools menu. Word displays the Options dialog box.
  2. Make sure the View tab is selected. (See Figure 1.)
  3. Figure 1. The View tab of the Options dialog box.

  4. Make sure the Highlight check box is cleared.
  5. Click on OK.

You will notice that the highlighting in your document immediately disappears, but the text remains. When you are again ready to view your highlighting marks, simply reverse the above process. If you print your document with the highlighting turned off, the marks will not appear on the printout either.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (1226) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Turning Off Highlighter Display.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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