Pages' highlighting won't unhighlight in Word

So, I'm writing on behalf of a coworker who (we all use PC's with Word at work =\) works with a contractor who has a Mac and Pages. When she sends us documents, they are about 45 pages long with all types of formatting, mainly highlighting. When he opens up the exported .doc file from Pages, here, he can't unhighlight stuff she's highlighted - the only way he can work around it is to unformat the WHOLE thing which really makes going back through a time-consuming process. Is the "highlighting" from Pages (background color, I guess) really that incompatible with Word? Anyone had a similar issue or a workaround? I can't unhighlight even on my Word, so it's something with the exported file from Pages.