Improve Highlighting
Make the full spectrum of colors that are available in Shading also available in Highlighting. I often use Highlighting to mark important or unusual text streams and I would like to search for particular colors of Highlighting .

Thanks for your feedback! We’re reviewing your suggestion.
39 comments
-
ron007 commented
DUH!
.
It's been under review for 4 years, since immediately after 2016 went GA. You missed 2019, I hope you will implement it in Office "2022(?)".
.
The Highlighter is the last color feature stuck in the 1980s.
.
One commenter feels the current colors are too loud. If you make this change, please give us an easy way to still access the loud colors. I like them. I do agree, that the dark colors are too dark.Actually, just had a brain ****. For the dark colors, it would be helpful if you would automagically change the text display color to a contrasting or more visible color, ie starting with white. Whether you change the printing color too is open to discussion.
Make sure that this change is implemented in all of the "Office" applications! This should not be a development team optional change. For example PPT now has the eyedropper to pick up custom colors. In the name of consistency, it would be nice to have this in Word and Excel also.
While you are fixing this problem, add a user controlled option to set default highlighter color.
.
Wake up and smell the scented highlighter!https://www.amazon.ca/BAZIC-Fruit-Scented-Mini-Highlighters/dp/B0018MU26Q
-
Jenny F commented
This suggestion has been "under review" for some time. Surely something could have been done to rectify this issue by now.
As others have said, as a bare minimum their needs to be a wider selection of colours. A selection somewhat similar to that found in OneNote for Windows 10 would be good. Ultimately though, to be able to select from the same colour family as the selected colour theme of a document would be more helpful and aesthetically pleasing.
-
G. O. Tuhls commented
I think it's solved by the full spectrum using text marker in the drawing tools.
-
ndoyle commented
I see the Word Product Team reviewed this recommendation back in October 2016, three and a half years ago. Please look at this again. The full pallet of font colors/theme colors also available for highlighting would make highlighting useful. Current color choices are too loud or too dark. Thank you!
-
Anonymous commented
Yes please, additional highlighting colors (user configurable) would be much appreciated.
-
Anonymous commented
Admin...there are at least two similar threads running (search highlight). It would be a good idea to merge them and add the votes together.
-
Anonymous commented
Need more color choices in highlighting - please!
-
NatMatNZ commented
Yes! This is oddly inconsistent between Microsoft products and it makes no sense. With people tend to develop a system of colour-coded highlights: for me, yellow is important but orange is more so. It is frustrating not to be able to use this in Word, but instead jump from yellow to intense, angry red.
It also has the effect of seeming to date MS Word back to when the 16 colours were the standard. The world has moved on, Microsoft!
-
Carl commented
Win10 color palette is for the birds. I want to have the color palette back and in particular, yellow should be available as a highlight color. After all that is the traditional color of highlighters sold at staples and else where.
The green highlight used by snipping tool does nothing but obfuscate the text. Lunacy. And by the way that is the "out of the box" experience. Nothing added or changed. And on your surface Pro to boot.
-
em commented
Include lighter pastel colours please!
-
Anonymous commented
I am visually impaired, and the intense highlight colors make it difficult to read the underlying text. The highlight colors in Onenote work well for me for highlighting important text and color coding content. Please give the same range of color choice in Word.
-
LMM commented
Here Here! Make highlighting more user friendly!
-
Anonymous commented
Please (1) allow customization of the color palette for Highlight, in Word. (2) Give much more highlight colors as the in-built default. (3) Allow the user to set the translucency of the highlighting color (for example 10% transparent, 30% or else).
-
Anonymous commented
I have always usee the 'categorize' features in my calendar and it has been very helpful. However, the colors that are now available are so unpleasant (garish) that they make looking at the calendar unpleasant. I'd love to see the current version of Outlook revert to the categorizing colors that were available with the old version.
-
Anonymous commented
2 years on... are you still reviewing. There are multiple similar requests started up about highlighting
-
Anonymous commented
custom highlight colors. Pleeeease.
-
Anonymous commented
Yes!
Most of the highlight colours are too dark onscreen - and only 2 are decent when the document is printed for review.
-
Anonymous commented
Well, the ridiculous thing is that there's a huge highlight color palette in MS Excel. The don't even have to create one! I worked in software development for years. Since they already call the Excel palette, just copy that source code or, better yet, change out the basic HORRIBLE highlight color palette the other Office programs call and replace it with the better one currently in Excel. It's not rocket science, folks, since you already do it!
-
Anonymous commented
That's would be very helpful. Most of the existing highlight colors are not suitable for black text on white background. Many times I don't have many option to highlight the text. When I needed more colors, I either highlight text with the very dark colors available, which is difficult to read through, or I chose to underline the text. Please consider this suggestion
-
Dory Owen commented
Default highlight colors should be "transparent" pastel colors --
or rename this feature to "Obliterate Text with Color" :-)