Apply colour coding
- Open a Word document containing formatted text (bold, italic, underline, or strikethrough).
- Switch to the Colour tab in the Working Document Helper task pane.
- Review the colour key table. Adjust any colours if needed (see Colour Coding).
- Click Add Colour.
Working Document Helper processes every paragraph in the document body and applies the appropriate highlight or font colour based on each text run's formatting.
Processing tables
By default, Working Document Helper processes the document body only. If your document contains tables with formatted text that also needs colour coding:
- Tick the Process tables only checkbox on the Colour tab.
- Click Add Colour.
TIP
If the normal processing is missing markup text inside tables, enable this option and run Add Colour again. The checkbox tooltip explains when to use it.
Progress and estimated time
For large documents, the status bar at the top of the task pane shows:
- The current operation status (e.g., "Processing paragraph 45 of 200").
- A progress bar showing how far through the document the operation has reached.
- An estimated time remaining (e.g., "~30s remaining" or "~2m 15s remaining").
The estimate adapts as the operation progresses — complex paragraphs take longer, so the estimate updates based on recent processing speed.
Stopping an operation
If a document is very large or you need to interrupt processing:
- Click the Stop button next to the progress bar.
- The operation halts after the current paragraph finishes.
- Any colour coding already applied to earlier paragraphs is kept.
- You can click Add Colour again to continue from where you stopped, though it will re-process from the beginning.
What gets changed
| Text formatting | Applied change |
|---|---|
| Bold | Background highlight added (default: yellow) |
| Italic | Background highlight added (default: blue) |
| Underline | Font colour changed (default: green) |
| Highlight (yellow) + font colour (red) | |
| Highlight (blue) + font colour (red) | |
| Highlight (red) + font colour (black) | |
| Plain text | No change |
What is not changed
- The original formatting (bold, italic, underline, strikethrough) is preserved. Only colour and highlight are modified.
- Text in headers, footers, and text boxes is not processed.
- Images and other non-text content are left unchanged.
Next steps
- Removing Colour — strip colour coding when you are done
- Colour Coding — customise the colour key
- Accepting Agreements — process agreements (Pro)