How to Remove Text Selection in Word – 6 Ways

While working in the Word text editor, users are faced with cases of highlighting text in a document that has been formatted according to certain requirements. The initial formatting is not always suitable, so the user has a question about how to remove text selection in Word.

From the selected settings, the font, color and background of the text of the MS Word document change. This style of formatting makes the contents of the document more visual, allows you to highlight some important points.

You may have noticed that when you paste text into another document, or when you copy it from other sources such as e-books and the web, the original formatting of the document is often preserved.

But, it is not always necessary to save the original formatting in a new document. In other cases, you want to remove the selection of text in the original document in order to return the default formatting settings used in the Microsoft Word text editor.

For example, you need to change the highlight color of Word, change the settings for the font used in the document.

In the article, we will look at how to remove text selection in Word, made in different ways: how to remove color selection in text, how to remove text selection after copying, etc.

How to remove text selection in Word – 1 way

The first method assumes that the deletion of the text selection takes place in the reverse order from how it was created earlier.

Do the following:

1. In an open Word document window, click the Home tab.
2. The Font group contains buttons that can be used to deselect certain types of text.
3. If lines, characters, words or paragraphs of text were selected using the corresponding element on the ribbon in Word, you need to select a section of text, and then click on the appropriate button in the Font group: Bold, Italic, Underline, Strikethrough, Font Color, etc.

As a result of the performed actions, the selection will be removed from the text of the document.

Remove text selection – 2 way

You can remove all highlights in text by clearing document formatting. You need to reset the document settings to the default settings.

Please note that in this way you will not be able to remove the highlighting of the text with color. Do not confuse this design element with font color, which highlights only the font itself, and not the background behind the text.

Do the following:

1. In an open Word document, click anywhere with the mouse cursor.
2. Press the “Ctrl” + “A” keys, with which all the text in this document will be selected.
3. After highlighting the text, go to the “Home” tab.
4. In the “Styles” group, click on the arrow located at the bottom right of the ribbon of examples of available style options.
5. In the “Advanced Options” menu that opens, click on the “Clear Format” item.

As a result of changing the text formatting options, the Word document will take on the default view.

How to remove color selection in Word – 1 way

Some documents, after formatting, include sections of text that are highlighted in color. Let’s see how to remove gray, yellow, blue, red highlight text in Word.

Just clearing the formatting doesn’t remove the highlighting, so we need to use another method.

Go through the steps:

1. Open a Word document on the Home tab.
2. Select all the text in the document, or the desired piece of text that is highlighted in color.
3. In the Font group, click on the small arrow located on the Text Highlight Color button.
4. In the drop-down menu with a palette of colors, click on the item “No color”.

Read the detailed article about removing the background in Word in different ways.

How to remove text highlighting in Word – 2 way

There is a way that you can use formatting as a painter. We’ll apply the formatting of a section of text that doesn’t have a highlight to another section of the document that has a highlight.

This method can be applied to various types of selection to change the formatting of the document content, according to the specified parameters.

Follow these steps:

1. In a Word document, go to the Home tab.
2. Select a piece of text in the document that will serve as a template for formatting. We will select plain text that does not have selections, which will serve as a reference for us.
3. Click the Format Painter button.
4. Select the piece of text where you want to change the formatting.

How to remove text selection after copying – 1 way

Sometimes, users are faced with the fact that as a result of copying text, especially from the Internet to another document, color highlights are retained in the new content.

You can use the solutions already described in the article to solve this problem. If their application does not lead to a positive result, use other methods.

Try this way:

1. In an open Word document window, go to the Home tab.
2. In the Styles group, click on the arrow located in the lower right corner of the group.
3. In the “Styles” menu, click on the “Clear All” option.

How to remove the selection of copied text – 2 way

This method assumes that when text is inserted into a document from another source, the original formatting is removed, including various types of selection.

Apply the following algorithm of actions:

1. Copy text from another document or from the Internet.
2. Right-click inside an empty Word document.
3. In the window that opens, there are 5 paste options: “Using Destination Theme”, “Keep Source Formatting”, “Merge Formatting”, “Picture”, “Keep Text Only”.
4. Select the “Keep text only” option.

Article Conclusions

When formatting text in Word, various document formatting methods are used: bolding, italicizing, underlining, strikethrough, changing the font color, highlighting, and other similar elements are also used. In some cases, users need to remove highlighting from document text. You can use several options in Word to resolve this issue.