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How can a user change the highlight background color for selected text in Microsoft Office (version Office 365 (16.0), if it matters)? This selection color appears also to apply to matched words from the "Find and replace" dialog.

In regards to "Find and replace", I am not referring to the annotation/formatting highlighter feature at all, and not the search produced by CTRL-F, (which starts a separate "Navigation" side bar with search capability which only partially duplicates Find and Replace features and has a totally different highlighting color!). I mean the "Advanced" find feature via CTRL+H, or via the Ribbon: Home > Editing > Find > Advanced Find.

Changing the "Office Theme" did not seem to make a difference for the selection coloring.

Also, the selected text color in Notepad (which I take to indicate how Windows' colors are configured) does not match Office, but various Office apps all match eachother, so it must be some independent set of color configurations. https://ibb.co/4FGftvw

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  • As you said, the highlight settings of C2R versions of Office seems to be separate from Windows settings. Please check whether the article is helpful, "How Can I Change the Default Highlight Color for a Microsoft Word Document?"
    – Emily
    Commented Aug 27, 2020 at 9:50
  • Thanks for the suggestion, @Emily, however, that refers to the annotation highlighting feature rather than the UI's "this is actively selected text" indicator highlighting.
    – Justin
    Commented Aug 27, 2020 at 15:02
  • Sorry for the wrong article. If you may accept the black as highlighted color, please refer to Hans's reply in the thread "Selected text/selected items color change", I test on my environment with Microsoft 365 (64-bit), it works.
    – Emily
    Commented Aug 28, 2020 at 9:12
  • @Emily that second suggestion worked. Kind of weird that the options are "gray or black" and I don't love needing to regedit for this, but definitely better than gray! Especially since it can get confusing with dynamic field highlighting also being gray. I'd be happy to mark it answer if you want to copy it down.
    – Justin
    Commented Oct 18, 2021 at 19:53

1 Answer 1

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For those that don't like the black highlight & want the gray - The cause is Windows Speech Recognition application.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/selected-text-black-solved-microsoft-word-2019/7c68549a-a42e-48f9-bb2d-fbd79278a8d6

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    – Community Bot
    Commented Oct 17, 2021 at 5:53

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