Highlighting for Off-Screen Text Appears On-Screen

  • What happens: Highlighting (see Highlighting Content) from all over your document appears in the Word window, regardless of what text actually appears on-screen. Highlighting may overlap.

  • What this means: Contract Tools uses a Microsoft programming interface to determine whether text appears on-screen. An update to Word released on August 19, 2026 has caused this programming interface to behave unexpectedly.

  • What you should do: Revert to Word version 2607 (build 20228.20190) or earlier; visit How to revert to an earlier version of Office to learn how. As an alternative, you can disable Contract Tools’ text highlighting features.

To disable Contract Tools’ text highlighting features:

  1. Show the Contract Tools pane, and then click the Preferences button.

  2. Deselect the Highlighting & Underlining checkboxes.

In addition, you can report this issue (specifically, that determining what text appears on-screen is unreliable in Word version 2608 (build 20326.20100) and later) to Microsoft; visit Send feedback to Microsoft with the Feedback Hub app to learn more.

If highlighting is misaligned with text in your document, see The Contract Tools Pane Appears with Black Shapes; Highlighting Is Misplaced.