Using the Highlight Tool | Microsoft Word Version 2002 Inside Out (Inside Out (Microsoft))

3 4

As in earlier versions of Word, the Highlight tool is available for use in Word 2002, and its functionality remains the same. Highlighting calls attention to important or questionable text in documents, as illustrated in Figure 33-2. Highlighting parts of a document works best when the document is viewed on line, although you can use highlighting in printed documents if necessary. When you use the Highlight tool, the main tasks you'll perform are adding, removing, finding, and replacing highlighting. The next few sections briefly describe these procedures.

figure 33-2. you can use the highlight tool to draw attention to particular information in your word document when you're collaborating with others.

Figure 33-2. You can use the Highlight tool to draw attention to particular information in your Word document when you're collaborating with others.

Note

In Word 2002, the Highlight tool is no longer included on the Reviewing toolbar. Instead, you have to access the Highlight tool directly from the Formatting toolbar.

Highlighting Information

You can apply highlighting to a single block of selected text or graphics, or you can apply highlighting to a series of text areas or graphics. To apply a single instance of highlighting to information, select the information, and then click the Highlight button on the Formatting toolbar. To apply highlighting to multiple blocks of information, click the Highlight button, select the text or graphic you want to highlight, and then select the next item in the document you want to highlight. The Highlight tool continues to highlight information as you select it. To turn off highlighting, click the Highlight button again, or press Esc.

You can change the highlight color by clicking the Highlight button down arrow and choosing a color on the drop-down menu. The color you choose becomes the default highlight color until you select another color on the drop-down menu.

Tip - Choose highlight colors wisely

Be sure to choose a light highlight color if you're going to print your document with highlighted text, especially if the document will be printed in monochrome (including grayscale) or on a dot-matrix printer. If more than one person is going to be adding highlighting to a document, consider assigning highlight colors to each person or standardize highlight colors to indicate a particular issue (for example, reviewers could use turquoise highlighting to specify that a page reference needs to be completed, bright green highlighting to draw attention to repeated information, and so forth).

Inside Out

If you save highlighted text as part of a Web page, Word stores the highlighting information as part of the Web page's cascading style sheet (CSS). This information will be understood and displayed properly in Internet Explorer 3 and Netscape Navigator 4 browsers, but earlier versions of those browsers (and other less widely used browsers) might not display the highlighting properly. If you're not sure which browsers viewers will be using to display your Web page, you should consider using another method to draw attention to the text in place of highlighting. For example, you could color the text itself, create a graphic of the highlighted text, or build a table and color the text's table cell to simulate a highlighted paragraph.

Removing Highlighting from Documents

You can remove the highlighting in a document when you no longer need to draw attention to the text or graphic. To remove highlighting, follow these steps:

Select the information you want to remove highlighting from, or press Ctrl+A to select the entire document.
On the Formatting toolbar, click the Highlight button down arrow, and then choose None on the drop-down menu.

After you choose None, all instances of highlighting are removed from the selected text.

Tip - Display and hide highlighting

You can display or hide highlighting (but not the text itself) on screen and in the printed document without permanently removing the highlighting. To do so, choose Tools, Options, click the View tab, clear or select the Highlight check box in the Show section, and click OK.

Finding Highlighted Items

If you want to jump from highlighted item to highlighted item, you can do so by using the Find And Replace dialog box. To find instances of highlighted text, follow these steps:

Choose Edit, Find, or press Ctrl+F.
If necessary, click More to expand the Find tab.
Click Format, and choose Highlight.
Click Find Next to jump to the next occurrence of highlighted text, and click Close when you've finished reviewing instances of highlighted text.

You can also select all instances of highlighted text at one time by selecting the Highlight All Items Found In check box in the Find And Replace dialog box, verifying that Main Document is selected in the drop-down list below the check box, and clicking the Find All button.

For more information about the Find And Replace dialog box, see Chapter 12, "Honing Document Navigation Skills."

Reformatting Highlighted Items with Another Highlight Color

If your document contains a highlight color that you'd like to change, or if you'd like to change all instances of highlighting in a document to the same color, you can do so. To change a single instance of a highlight color, choose another highlight color on the Highlight button drop-down menu, and then select the highlighted text. The color changes to the newly selected color.

To change the color of multiple instances of highlighting, you can use the Find And Replace dialog box. Using this technique, you replace all highlighting (regardless of original highlight color) with a newly selected color, as follows:

Click the Highlight down arrow, and select the color you want to assign to all highlighting.
Choose Edit, Replace, or press Ctrl+H. The Find And Replace dialog box appears.
If necessary, click More to expand the Replace tab.
Make sure that no text appears in the Find What and Replace With boxes, position your insertion point in the Find What box, and then click Format and choose Highlight.
Click in the Replace With box, and choose Format, Highlight.
Click Replace All, and then click OK in the message box that tells you how many replacements were made.
Click Close to close the Find And Replace dialog box.

In addition to replacing all highlighted text with the newly selected color, you can also replace selected instances of highlighting with a new color. To do so, use the preceding procedure, but in step 6 click Find Next instead of Replace All. You can then specify which instances of highlighting are replaced with a new color on a case-by-case basis.

Note

You can also change all instances of highlighting to the same color by selecting all instances of highlighting using the Find tab, as described in the section "Finding Highlighted Items," and then choosing a new color on the Highlight button drop-down menu.