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?

Start highlighting

  1. On the Home tab, in the Font group, click the arrow next to Text Highlight Color.

    word ribbon image

  2. 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.

  3. Select the text or graphic that you want to highlight.
  4. To stop highlighting, click the arrow next to Text Highlight Color button image and click Stop Highlighting, or press ESC.

Highlight selected text

  1. Select the text that you want to highlight.
  2. On the Home tab, in the Font group, click the arrow next to Text Highlight Color.

    word ribbon image

  3. 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.

Remove highlighting from part or all of a document

  1. Select the text that you want to remove highlighting from, or press CTRL+A to select all of the text in the document.
  2. On the Home tab, in the Font group, click the arrow next to Text Highlight Color.

    word ribbon image

  3. Click No Color.

Quickly find highlighted text

  1. On the Home tab, in the Editing group, click Find.

    word ribbon image

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