How to Add Custom Highlight Colors to Text in Word Office 365

Adding custom highlight colors to your text in Microsoft Word for Office 365 can significantly enhance the readability and visual appeal of your documents. However, the default highlight color options provided by the interface are somewhat limited, and the term "Highlight" is used regardless of the color applied. This article will guide you through various methods to add custom highlight colors, including using VBA and leveraging the Shading Paragraph feature.

Default Limitations

When working with Microsoft Word in Office 365, the Highlight pulldown in the Font group only allows you to choose from a predefined set of colors. Additionally, the term "Highlight" is uniformly applied to all selected colors, meaning that when you use the Find dialog to search for highlighted text, it will find all highlight colors, not just specific ones like yellow or red.

VBA for Custom Highlight Colors

If you are familiar with Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), you can define additional highlight colors. However, this approach still faces limitations unless you delve deeper into VBA programming.

Alternative UI Method: Shading Paragraph Group

An alternative approach that works through the user interface is to use the Shading Paragraph Group. You can choose from a larger range of colors using the "Borders and Shading..." option in the Borders button's pulldown. The Fill option offers a broader palette of colors, and the "More colors..." option provides a comprehensive color panel. Additionally, the Custom tab allows you to define custom colors using RGB or HSL values.

Steps to Apply Shading

Select the text you want to highlight.

Go to the Shading Paragraph group under the Paragraph tab.

Click the "Borders and Shading..." button.

Choose the "Fill" option to select a custom color. If you need more options, click "More colors..." to open the color picker.

If you want even more control, click the Custom tab to define a custom color using RGB or HSL values.

Define Custom Character Style

A more advanced and flexible method involves defining a custom character style with the desired highlight color. Here’s how you can do it:

Define a custom character style with the color you want to use.

Create the style and define a custom keyboard shortcut to make it easy to apply.

When creating the style, ensure that the attributes are added to the "Default Paragraph Font" to avoid altering other formatting.

This approach has a significant advantage: you can use the Find dialog to locate instances of the named style. Features like Find Next and Find In allow you to skip through or select all instances of the style at once, making it easy to manage and apply the style throughout your document.

Bonus: Using Find and Replace for Named Character Styles

One of the bonus features of using named character styles is that you can apply these styles using Find and Replace. If you use the wildcard feature in Find, you can apply the style to complex patterns rather than just specific strings. For example, to apply a custom charURL style to any email address in your document, you might use the following steps:

In the Find what box, use a wildcard pattern like [a-z0-9_.]{2}@[a-z0-9_.]{2} to match email addresses.

Turn on "Use wildcards" in the Find options.

Use the Format Style… option to select the named character style you want to apply.

With these methods, you can effectively add custom highlight colors to your text in Word Office 365, making your documents more visually appealing and easier to read.