How to select more highlight colors in Word
If you color-code the text in your Word documents, you may feel constrained by the 15 Highlight Color choices:
Fortunately, there's another command available if you want to expand your color palette: Shading. The button is not far from the Highlight Color selector on the Word toolbar: It's just about seven spots to the right over in the Paragraph section:
You can use More Colors to select from the expanded Colors dialog:
Or even enter custom RGB values if you like:
This feature is available in both Word 2007 and Word 2010.
A couple of small cautions: If you use my tip for hiding highlighter marks, any text with Shading will still be displayed and printed. Also, you'll have to remove Shading separately from Highlighting - simply select your target text and choose No Color for each.
Suzanne
Anonymous
August 18, 2011
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September 30, 2011
Thank you for this very clear info.Anonymous
February 24, 2012
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June 13, 2012
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September 25, 2012
I wish Microsoft would increase color options to include some pastel colors under the highlighting tool! It is difficult to see black font with some of the available colors. I don't want to go through the fuss of using shading mechanism.... Microsoft-pls provide an option to custom these colors. Thank you!.Anonymous
October 13, 2012
^Did you try selecting the text you wanted to shade first before shading? Because that worked for me.Anonymous
November 01, 2012
I tried the above and also had the entire paragraph highlighted, not a section of text in the paragraphAnonymous
November 26, 2012
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January 15, 2013
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January 15, 2013
^Did you try selecting the text you wanted to shade first before shading? Because that worked for me. It worked for me tooAnonymous
January 23, 2013
Awesome! Just what I was looking for and found it just a google search away :) Truly grateful :)Anonymous
April 09, 2013
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April 10, 2013
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May 01, 2013
Thanks so much. I've been looking for a way to access more highlighter colors. Your tip is great!Anonymous
May 24, 2013
Great tip - even older versions of Microsoft Word have the shading tool in the format tab!Anonymous
June 11, 2013
Thank you very much... imagine not noticing this all these decades ;-)Anonymous
July 12, 2013
Great, it works! Just what I was searching. Thank you!Anonymous
July 18, 2013
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August 10, 2013
Brilliant - exactly what I was looking for, and so easy!Anonymous
October 05, 2013
VERY HELPFUL FOR MY PHD THESISAnonymous
October 18, 2013
Thank you so much, this is so helpful for my thesisAnonymous
October 26, 2013
Thank you so much! For so long I have despaired over those old colors.Anonymous
November 20, 2013
my documents contains text highlighted with different colors ( let say yellow and blu ) How can select only text highlighted with yellow ? thanks