I edited a document from a client with some highlights then later decided to remove the highlights for comments instead.
For whatever reason, the document highlighted a number of bullet point and numbered list sections which I could not revert when I attempted to select the entire document and change the highlighting to 'No Fill'.
The highlighted bullet point/number lists did not allow me to select them to revert.
Searches on Google seemed to result in a ton of convoluted "[Solved]" responses on their forum which didn't fix the issue for me (or resulted in a TLDR response from my brain...):
Google Search: open office remove highlight bullet lists
[Solved] Yellow highlighting won't go away
[Solved] Bullet highlighting will not go away.
[Solved] Surprise Yellow Highlighting on Bullets & Numbers
Permanently highlighted bullets.
[Solved] Oddities Involving Bullets/Outlines & Font Styles
[Solved] Bullet color
Seriously... what the heck!? How can this be so hard? So I decided this issue needed some serious StackOverflow help...
Version info:
Apache OpenOffice-4.1.4
AOO414m5(Build:9788) - Rev. 1811857
2017-10-11 20:12
So after all that...
I figured it out. But its still crazy how it's not answered very clearly in the resources above... I hope this helps someone not spend as much time on this in the future.
If you double-click the first bullet/number of the list... it appears to select the first word of the first item of the list, BUT you'll see that it also selects the list bullets/numbers with a dark gray highlight.
Now selected, you can remove the highlight from the list.
Selecting all of the document doesn't select the numbered/bulleted lists.
Well, most of this solutions didnt helped me.
But I found a simple way to fix it:
Select Highlight option.
Position to the left of the bullet until the cursor converts to a white arrow.
One click to highlight entire text line. One click again to un-highlight the entire text line (including the bullet).
Select the highlighted area, rather "highlight" the highlighted area and press CTRL+Q, it is a paragraph formatting issue and this should remove all formatting from the selected area.
The answers above didn't work. Try this (mouse-select means left-click and drag the selection of words, aka highlighting but wanted to avoid confusion):
Turn on paragraph marks ¶ in Word
Add a clean paragraph before the highlighted-bullet sentence. (Clean means it's unbulleted, without colour highlight, unformatted)
Mouse-select the entire bulleted sentence containing the highlighted bullet. Make sure the selection also goes left before the highlighted bullet to include the clean paragraph above it i.e. your selection should include the ''¶'' mark of the clean paragraph you created in 2.
Apply white/clear/no-colour highlighting.
It's actually pretty simple though I was having trouble with it myself. Just select all the items of that particular bulleted/numbered list and highlight them. Then select the items again and remove the highlight. Doing that removed the highlights from the bullets too for me.
Super frustrating but here's the fix that's always worked for me (even with .doc or .docx file):
Double click the bulleted/numbered list item so they all highlight
Ctrl + Spacebar (resets character formatting)
Apply any needed formatting (font type, bold, etc.)
This will keep the formatting on the paragraph (indents, header type, etc.) but will just allow you to change the format of the actual text that is highlighted - which is likely all you want.
Hope that works for you!
The highlighted text in the paragraph that you have highlighted past the period id causing this issue. If you want to keep the last sentence highlighted but remove the highlight bullet just remove highlight on the period at the end of the paragraph and the highlighted bullet goes away :)
(If you can) Start from above, add in a new clean bullet point, copy/paste the desired text from the problematic highlighted bullet point, then delete the problematic highlighted bullet point altogether.
So I am having a problem. This is what I can create on one of my laptop:
On another, when I created something that has {TC} in it, the whole field code disappeared.
For the example above, if on the other computer, both are running Office 2010,
I can input the code to create the table of content from:
{TOC \f \h \z \f 1\t "Heading 1,1,Heading 2,2,Heading 3,3,Title,1}
to
{TC}
The moment I type in TC, the whole {} disappears.
Other field codes work just fine, except for {TC}. So my question is how do I get {TC} to show on my other laptop?
Thank you for your time.
Apparently, I found my answer.
When I searched google for my answer, most sites give this as a solution:
For Word 2010, go to File->Options->Advanced
Under Show document contents: Select "Show field code instead of their values"
This is the equivalent of pressing Alt+F9, which DID NOT solve my problem.
Apparently, the solution to get {TC} to show in your document is in:
go to File->Options->Display
and check to always show HIDDEN TEXT.
I hope this helps someone in the future.
Yeah, the disappearing TC code is annoying at first -- seems like it's broken. Other codes work, but why does that disappear, even if entering manually? Word instantly sets TC code to Hidden, even the field code itself.
To temporarily toggle this visible without permanently changing your display to show Hidden Text, you can use the normal Ctrl-Shift-8, which toggles display of spaces, paragraph marks, tabs, and Hidden Text, on and off. This is a good keyboard shortcut to have in your standard back of tricks anyway. It is frequent in Word that you need to toggle paragraph marks on and off, because paragraph formatting is attached to the Paragraph mark, and when they're hidden, it can be tricky to fix various formatting issues.
The original post was a few years ago, but I fear things have gotten worse since then, not better. I am using Word 365 v2201, which should be up to date. The other day, I wasted hours on trying to resolve this issue with TC field codes.
First I tried entering them using Insert > Quick Parts > Field. Word creates what looks like a field code, but it behaves as normal text. Messing around with the various controls to toggle field display and hidden text etc etc, has absolutely no effect. It is basically a faux field. And of course, it is completely ignored when compiling the TOC.
Next, I tried entering it manually, by using Ctrl + F9 to either create a blank field or convert some existing text into a field. Same result as above.
As with the original post, this seems to afflict only the TC field code. Other codes work fine, including TOC. And if I create a TOC field, then edit the code to TC, it immediately loses its properties as a field. If I then put the O back in, it immediately behaves as a field once again. Unlike in the original post, adjusting the settings for field display and/or hidden text, have no impact.
In the end, the only solution was to create the field using Alt + Shift + o to open the Mark Table of Contents Entry dialog box. And finally, this works!
Does anyone know a way to display code in Microsoft Word documents that preserves coloring and formatting? Preferably, the method would also be unobtrusive and easy to update.
I have tried to include code as regular text which looks awful and gets in the way when editing regular text. I have also tried inserting objects, a WordPad document and Text Box, into the document then putting the code inside those objects. The code looks much better and is easier to avoid while editing the rest of the text. However, these objects can only span one page which makes editing a nightmare when several pages of code need to be added.
Lastly, I know that there are much better editors/formats that have no problem handling this but I am stuck working with MS word.
Here is the best way, for me, to add code inside word:
Go to Insert tab, Text section, click Object button (it's on the right)
Choose OpenDocument Text which will open a new embedded word document
Copy and paste your code from Visual Studio / Eclipse inside this embedded word page
Save and close
Advantages
The result looks very nice. Here are the advantages of this method:
The code keeps its original layout and colors
The code is separated from the rest of the document, as if it was a picture or a chart
Spelling errors won't be highlighted in the code (this is cool !)
And it takes only few seconds.
Download and install Notepad++ and do the following:
Paste your code in the window;
Select the programming language from the language menu;
Select the text to copy;
Right click and select Plugin commands -> Copy Text with Syntax Highlighting;
Paste it into MS Word and you are good to go!
Update 29/06/2013:
Notepad++ has a plugin called "NppExport" (comes pre-installed) that allows you to copy to RTF, HTML and ALL. It permits dozens of languages, whereas the aforementioned IDEs are limited to a handful each (without other plug-ins).
I use Copy all formats to clipboard and "paste as HTML" in MS word.
After reading a lot of related answers, I came across my own solution, which for me is the most suitable one.
Result looks like this:
As you can see, it is the same syntax highlighting like on Stack Overflow which is quite awesome.
Steps to reproduce:
on Stack Overflow
Goto Ask Question (preferably with Chrome)
Paste Code and add a language tag (e.g. Java) to get syntax hightlighting
Copy code from preview
in Word
Insert > Table > 1x1
Paste code (you may need to use Paste Special... > Formatted Text (RTF) from the Edit menu to not lose the syntax hilighting)
Table Design > Borders > No Border
Select code > Edit > Find > Replace
Search Document ^p (Paragraph Mark)
Replace With ^l (Manual Line Break)
(This is required to remove the gaps between some lines)
Select code again > Review > Language > check "Do not check spelling or grammar"
Finally add a caption using References > Insert Caption > New Label > name it "Listing" or sth
Sample code thanks to this guy
There is a nice Online Tool for that : https://www.troye.io/planetb/
Just copy the generated code and paste it into your word editing software. So far I've tried it on MS Word and WPS Writer, works really well.
Doesn't play nice with Firefox but works just fine on Chrome (and IE too, but who wants to use that).
One of the main benefits is that, unlike the Code Format Add-In for Word, it does NOT mess with your code, and respects various languages' syntax.
I tried many other options offered in other answers but I found this one to be the most efficient (quick and really effective).
There is also another online tool quoted in another answer (markup.su) but I find the planetB output more elegant (although less versatile).
Input :
Output :
I type my code in Visual Studio, and then copy-paste into word. it preserves the colors.
When I've done this, I've made extensive use of styles. It helps a lot.
What I do is create a paragraph style (perhaps called "Code Example" or something like that) which uses a monospaced font, carefully chosen tabs, a very light grey background, a thin black border above and below (that helps visibility a lot) and with spelling turned off. I also make sure that inter-line and inter-paragraph spacing are set right. I then create additional character styles on top (e.g., "Comment", "String", "Keyword", "Function Name Decl", "Variable Name Decl") which I layer on top; those set the color and whether the text is bold/italic. It's then pretty simple to go through and mark up a pasted example as being code and have it come out looking really good, and this is works well for short snippets. Long chunks of code probably should not normally be in something that's going to go on a dead tree. :-)
An advantage of doing it this way is that it is easy to adapt to whatever code you're doing; you don't have to rely on some IDE to figure out whatever is going on for you. (The main problem? Printed pages typically aren't as wide as editor windows so wrapping will suck...)
Maybe this is overly simple, but have you tried pasting in your code and setting the font on it to Courier New?
Try defining a style called 'code' and make it use a small fixed width font, it should look better then.
Use CTRL+SPACEBAR to reset style.
If you are using Sublime Text, you can copy the code from Sublime to MS Word preserving the syntax highlighting.
Install the package called SublimeHighlight.
In Sublime, using your cursor, select the code you want to copy, right click it, select 'copy as rtf', and paste into MS Word.
I'm using Easy Code Formatter. It's also an Office add-in. It allows you to select the coding style / and has a quick formatting button. Pretty neat.
In case you're like me and are too lazy or in a hurry and don't want to download additional software, you can use http://markup.su/highlighter/. It's very straight forward and supports several highlight themes and many programming languages. In my case I was using Visual Studio Code, which doesn't allow copying with format due to CSS involved in styling (as reported here).
Copy the text from the Preview box and then in Word go to Insert -> Textbox, paste the Preview from the website, highlight all the text, and then disable spell checking for that textbox.
This is what the code looks like finally.
The best way I found is by using the table.
Create a table with 1x1. Then copy the code and paste it.
If you're using the desktop app then it will inherit the code editor theme color and paste it accordingly, else you can change the table style to any color.
UPDATE ------------------
From Word 2021, you can directly paste the code and it will preserve the formatting. No need to create the table.
Thank you #RdC1965 for mentioning this.
This is a bit indirect, but it works very nicely. Get LiveWriter and install this plugin:
http://lvildosola.blogspot.com/2007/02/code-snippet-plugin-for-windows-live.html
Insert your code using the plugin into a blog post. Select all and copy it to Word.
It looks great and can include line numbers. It also spans pages decently.
HTH
Colby Africa
Vim has a nifty feature that converts code to HTML format preserving syntax highlighting, font style, background color and even line numbers. Run :TOhtml and vim creates a new buffer containing html markup.
Next, open this html file in a web browser and copy/paste whatever it rendered to Word. Vim tips wiki has more information.
In my experience copy-paste from eclipse and Notepad++ works directly with word.
For some reason I had a problem with a file that didn't preserve coloring. I made a new .java file, copy-paste code to that, then copy-paste to word and it worked...
As the other guys said, create a new paragraph style. What I do is use mono-spaced font like courier new, small size close to 8px for fonts, single spaced with no space between paragraphs, make tab stops small (0.5cm,1cm,..,5cm), put a simple line border around the text and disable grammar checks. That way i achieved the line braking of eclipse so I don't have to do anything more.
Hope I helped ;)
This is the simplest approach I follow. Consider I want to paste java code.
I paste the code here so that spaces, tabs and flower brackets are neatly formated http://www.tutorialspoint.com/online_java_formatter.htm
Then I paste the code got from step 1 here so that the colors, fonts are added to the code http://markup.su/highlighter/
Then paste the preview code got from step 2 to the MS word. Finally it will look like this
You can use VS code to keep code format and highlighting. Directly copy and paste code from VS.
you can simply use this Add-in on any office program.
Go to insert tab, then Get Add-ins, and search for Easy Syntax Highlighter
It supports
185 languages and 89 themes.
Automatic language detection.
Multi-language code highlighting.
Use a monospaced font like Lucida Console, which comes with Windows. If you cut/paste from Visual Studio or something that supports syntax highlighting, you can often preserve the colour scheme of the syntax highlighter.
Answer for people trying to resolve this issue in 2019:
Most answers to this question are outdated by now. I wish there was a way to reinspect old questions and answers every now and then!
The method I found for this question that works with Office 365 and its associated programs can be found here.
I'm using Word 2010 and I like copying and paste from a github gist. Just remember to keep source formatting!
I then change the font to DejaVu Sans Mono.
You can opt to copy with or without the numbering.
Copying into Eclipse and paste it in Word is also another option.
You can also use SciTE to paste code if you don't want to install heavy IDEs and then download plugins for all the code you're making. Simply choose your language from the language menu, type your code, high-light code, select Edit->Copy as RTF, paste into Word with formatting (default paste).
SciTE supports the following languages but probably has support for others: Abaqus*, Ada, ANS.1 MIB definition files*, APDL, Assembler (NASM, MASM), Asymptote*, AutoIt*, Avenue*, Batch files (MS-DOS), Baan*, Bash*, BlitzBasic*, Bullant*, C/C++/C#, Clarion, cmake*, conf (Apache), CSound, CSS*, D, diff files*, E-Script*, Eiffel*, Erlang*, Flagship (Clipper / XBase), Flash (ActionScript), Fortran*, Forth*, GAP*, Gettext, Haskell, HTML*, HTML with embedded JavaScript, VBScript, PHP and ASP*, Gui4Cli*, IDL - both MSIDL and XPIDL*, INI, properties* and similar, InnoSetup*, Java*, JavaScript*, LISP*, LOT*, Lout*, Lua*, Make, Matlab*, Metapost*, MMIXAL, MSSQL, nnCron, NSIS*, Objective Caml*, Opal, Octave*, Pascal/Delphi*, Perl, most of it except for some ambiguous cases*, PL/M*, Progress*, PostScript*, POV-Ray*, PowerBasic*, PowerShell*, PureBasic*, Python*, R*, Rebol*, Ruby*, Scheme*, scriptol*, Specman E*, Spice, Smalltalk, SQL and PLSQL, TADS3*, TeX and LaTeX, Tcl/Tk*, VB and VBScript*, Verilog*, VHDL*, XML*, YAML*.
If you are using Intellij IDEA, just copy the code from the IDE and paste it in the word document.
A web site for coloration with lots of languages.
http://hilite.me/
You can host one yourself since it is open source. The code is on github.
There really isn't a clean way to do it, and it could still look fishy based on your exact style settings.
What you could try to do is to first run a code-to-HTML conversion (there are many programs that do that), and then try to open up the HTML file with word, that might hopefully provide you with the formatted and pretty code, and then copy and paste it into your document.
I was also looking for it and ended up creating something for my code display.
Here's a good way:
Create a rectangular form and place your text inside.
Change the font to Consolas and size ~10.
Change the text font to gray near-black (gray 25%, darker 75%)
Use darker colors to highlight your text if needed and choose one to be the contour.
I have created an easier method using tables, as they are easier to create, manage, and more consistent (with the possibility to save the table's style inside the document itself), but I couldn't find a better way for code colouring scheme, sorry for that.
Steps:
Create a 3x3 table.
Select the table, and make its borders invisible ("No Borders" option), and activate "View Gridlines" option.
Make the adjustments to cells' spacing and columns' widths to get the desired aspect. (You will have to get in "Table Properties" for fine tuning).
Create a "Paragraph Style" with the name of "Code" just for your code snippets (as mentioned in https://stackoverflow.com/a/25092977/8533804)
Create another "Paragraph Style" with the name of "Code_numberline" that will be based upon the previous created style, but this you will add a numbering line in its definition (this will automate line numbering).
Apply "Code_numberline" to the first column, and "Code" to the 3 column.
Add a fill in the middle column.
Save that table style and enjoy!
The best presentation for code in documents is in a fixed-width font (as it should appear in an IDE), with either a faint, shaded background or a light border to distinguish the block from other text.
If its Java source code copy it to Visual Studio and then copy it back to Word.