Use the Highlight tool to mark and find important text in your document. Highlighted parts of a document are easiest to see when the document is online.
What do you want to do?
Highlight selected text
- Select the text that you want to highlight.
- On the Home tab, in the Font group, click the arrow next to Text Highlight Color.

- Click the color that you want.
Note Use a light highlight color if you plan to print the document by using a monochrome or dot-matrix printer.
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Highlight multiple parts of a document
This method is best for highlighting multiple parts of a document, because the Highlight tool stays on until you decide to turn it off.
- On the Home tab, in the Font group, click the arrow next to Text Highlight Color.

- Click the color that you want.
The Text Highlight Color button displays the selected color, and the mouse pointer becomes a
when you point to the area of your document that contains text.
Note Use a light highlight color if you plan to print the document by using a monochrome or dot-matrix printer.
- Select the text or graphic that you want to highlight.
- To stop highlighting, click the arrow next to Text Highlight Color
and click Stop Highlighting, or press ESC.The mouse pointer becomes a
when you point to your document.
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Remove highlighting from part or all of a document
- Select the text that you want to remove highlighting from, or press CTRL+A to select all of the text in the document.
- On the Home tab, in the Font group, click the arrow next to Text Highlight Color.

- Click No Color.
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Quickly find highlighted text
- On the Home tab, in the Editing group, click Find.

- If you don't see the Format button, click More.
- Click Format, and then click Highlight.
- Click Find Next.
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