Have you ever used a marker to highlight certain sections of text on a page? It’s great at taking notes, but there’s a problem: highlighting a piece of paper is final. You can’t erase the color from the paper when you’re done.
In Microsoft Word, things are a bit different. You can replicate the highlighter effect in Word, but you can find and remove your highlights, unlike real highlighters.
This allows you to go through the highlights with Word’s search function, but you can also remove the highlights from the text later. It’s easy to learn how to apply, remove, and find highlighted text in Word – here’s what you have to do.
How to highlight a text selection in Word
If you only plan to highlight a portion of text using a single color, you can do it in seconds in Word.
To highlight a section of text in Word:
- Select your text. You can do it by simply dragging your cursor across it.
- Go to the tab Beginning.
- Click the arrow next to the button Text highlight color.
- Choose the color you want to use from the drop down menu.
Once you choose a color from the drop-down menu, the selected text will immediately update to show a highlighted background in that color.
How to highlight multiple text selections
If you have multiple pieces of text that you want to highlight, you can use the highlighting tool to make your text stand out.
However, you don’t have to use the above method to do so, as there is an easier way to select multiple sections of text. Once you turn on the highlighter, it will stay on until you turn it off, allowing you to highlight additional areas.
To highlight multiple sections of text in Word:
- Press “Beginning”On the ribbon bar.
- Select the arrow next to the button Text highlight color and select a color from the drop-down menu.
- The cursor will change to show a blinking text cursor with a marker attached. Select the text you want to highlight by dragging across it with the mouse.
- Repeat this step for any other sections of text that you want to highlight.
- When done, press the arrow next to the button. Text highlight color.
- Please select Stop highlighting.
If you want to change the colors, you can do so when the highlight tool is active. Click the Text Highlight Color button, choose another color, and then continue dragging portions of text to highlight them.
How to remove a text highlighter
You can do this using the tool Text Highlight Color when you want to remove highlights from your text in Word. This allows you to remove highlights from specific text or from the entire document.
To remove highlights from selected text in Word:
- Select the specific text you want to unmark or select all the text in your document using Ctrl + A.
- Press Beginning on the ribbon bar.
- Press the arrow next to the button Text highlight color.
- Please select Colorless.
How to find highlighted text in Word
You don’t need to manually scroll through the document to find parts of the text that you’ve highlighted. Thanks to the Search function in Word, you can locate any highlighted text in the blink of an eye.
Find a specific highlighted text
The highlighted text you are looking for may contain a specific word. If so, follow these steps to find it:
- Go to the tab Beginning.
- Click the arrow next to Look for and select Advanced search.
- When the window opens Search for and replace, enter your search term in the box Look for from the top.
- Click on Plus In the bottom left.
- Click on the drop-down box Format at the bottom under Search and select Highlight.
- Push the button Find next.
When you run the search, you will see any highlighted text that matches your search term. At this point, click Find next to scroll through the search results, or press Cancel to close the window.
Find all highlighted text
To find all the text that you have highlighted in your Word document, repeat the steps above, but delete step 2. No need to use a Advanced search here, and be sure to leave the box Look for empty.
When you click Find nextyou will see the first part of the highlighted text found. Continue by clicking Find next to see each additional section of text highlighted in your document.
When no more instances are found, you will see a message indicating this.
Save your highlighter
Fifteen nifty colors, a handy way to find highlighted text, and an easy way to delete it later – you can save your physical marker and use Word’s highlighting tool to start taking notes.
