How to remove highlight in the google slides API?

Question

I am using the Google API Python Client to replace text placeholders with generated data. In this example, I detect all instances of "bar" and replace them with "foo", in all slides. slides_service is instantiated with apiclient.discovery.build(...)

batch_requests_array = [
            {
                "replaceAllText": {
                    "replaceText": "foo",
                    "containsText": {
                        "text": "bar",
                        "matchCase": False
                    }
                }
            }
        ]

        batch_requests = {"requests": batch_requests_array}
        request = slides_service.presentations().batchUpdate(presentationId=slides_id, body=batch_requests)
        res = request.execute()

Now if bar has a highlight color, how can I remove that when I replace it with foo? I think I need to add a separate request to my batch requests array, but I have been scrolling up and down here without finding any clue.

For clarity, this is the highlight option I am talking about as it's presented in the UI

Answer 1

To remove the highlight color of a text, you will have to update the backgroundColor. To give you an idea, this is how the request should look, this will set the background fully transparent:

highlightedTextRequest = [
    {
        "updateTextStyle": {
            "objectId": "objectId",
            "style": {
                "backgroundColor": {
                }
            },              
        "fields": "*"
        }
    }
]

Note: The objectId in the request, is the ID of the shape or table with the text to be styled.

References:

• UpdateTextStyleRequest
• Formatting text with the Google Slides API