Can't remove grey background

[John Gray]

I have cut from a webpage which has a uniform dark grey background, and pasted into Word 2003.

The blank line has lost its background, but I can't find any way of clearing the grey background entirely.
Tables and Borders toolbar -> Shading Color (None) does nothing,
and Drawing toolbar -> Fill Color is greyed-out.

Puzzled!

GreyBG.PNG

[StuartR]

How about Format Paragraph?
(Sorry I no longer have a Word 2003 system on which to check this)

[John Gray]

Good try, but there's nothing in Format -> Paragraph, or Format -> Font, which seems to be relevant!

[StuartR]

Can you post the offending document, without any sensitive information?

[John Gray]

Not readily, I'm afraid - it contains email headers...

[StuartR]

Not readily, I'm afraid - it contains email headers...

Not even one tiny paragraph with grey background?

[silverback]

This may be completely a inappropriate suggestion for what you are trying to achieve, but how about pasting the web material into Word using Paste Special | Unformatted Text.
That should get rid of the grey background, albeit that you'll have to do some work on the text.

HTH
Silverback

[ABabeNChrist]

Hi John
I have Word 2007 and have experienced this same problem before, I was able change the back ground or text highlight color to different colors, but could not remove to “no color”. I just ended up retyping. I don’t believe I tried the approach that Silver back has mentioned.

[John Gray]

Thanks everyone - Notepad removes all known formatting!

This problem only appears in one website, so I'll try again tomorrow, at work.

[macropod]

Hi John,

Looks like grey highlighting to me.

[jscher2000]

Does Word's "reveal formatting" task pane show anything unusual?

By any chance is it field shading?

Might be interesting to save the document as HTML and then look at the formatting through that lens.

[John Gray]

Thanks, Jefferson! The only unusuality in Reveal Formatting appears to me to be Formatting of selected text -> Font -> Character Options: Highlight
So Macropod is entirely correct!

Finding out how to remove highlighting is a bit of a pain, since (in Windows 2003) it isn't in any of the Format Paragraph or Format Font options, but on the formatting toolbar, the a-b-pencil with the thick white underline:

highlight button.PNG

If anyone wants to play with the Word document I tested it on, I've attached it here:

Grey background.doc

Thanks to all contributors!

[HansV]

If you select the text in your sample document, click the dropdown arrow to the right of the Highlight button and select None, the grey background will disappear.

[John Gray]

Err,. yes - that's what I did! (But I should perhaps have made it more obvious that I'd done it...)