The other day somebody asked me to help him find anything that was formatted in the colour red in an email message he had received. The sender was unaware that the recipient was colour blind and that he could not see the difference between the text formatted in black and that in the colour red. As red was used to emphasise what needed to be amended, it was crucial for him to find it.
Apparently colour blindness (colour vision deficiency, or CVD) affects approximately one in 12 men (8%) and one in 200 women in the world, so today’s tip is how to make text look like it was marked with a highlighter pen, which the recipient above would find easy to spot.
Here’s how:
- Select the text you want to highlight. (You might want to have another look at Tip 50 and Tip 51 for tricks and shortcuts for selecting blocks of text.)
- On the Home tab, in the Font group, click on the Text Highlight Color button, not its drop-down arrow. (In Outlook the Text Highlight Color button can be found in the Basic Text group on the Message tab.)
You can also highlight existing text by clicking on the Text Highlight Color button and by dragging the mouse pointer over the text. Click the button again or press the Escape button on your keyboard to turn the highlighter attribute off.
See Tip 401 for help how to find (and replace) highlighted text in Word. In Outlook you can press F4 to display the Find and Replace dialogue box. Tip 108 explains how to find text in an email message.
* Unless stated otherwise, these tips were written for Microsoft Office 2010.
9 February 2016
Karen Roem offers software training and support through her company Roem Ltd. Contact her by email (Karen@roem.co.uk) or visit her website at www.roem.co.uk
Roem Ltd is a Learning Collaboration approved supplier, having come recommended by Cambridge Network member organisations. Network membership means you automatically have the right to book on to any LC course at any time, while some categories of membership actually include LC training units.