There is no built-in tool for highlighting text in PowerPoint 2010. However, there is a workaround to
highlight your PowerPoint
text using the Text Highlight Color within Microsoft Word. Now, if you come across a situation where you
have number of slides and you need to similarly highlight more text. Working repeatedly with Word for all
text highlighting across so many slides will be time consuming. Fortunately, you can tackle this issue easily
by using Format Painter within
PowerPoint, which lets you copy the text highlight and also helps in removing the highlight altogether. The
only caveat is that using the Format Painter will not only add the highlighting attribute, but will also add
all other text attributes of the original text such as font, font color, etc. Also, there may be a question
on your mind—is there a way to remove highlighting from text within PowerPoint? Explore more to learn to
copy and remove highlighting for text in PowerPoint
2010 for Windows:
- Open your PowerPoint presentation and navigate to any slide that has some highlighted text. In
Figure 1, below can see a slide which has some highlighted text. Want to know how to add text
highlighting in the first place? Explore our
Highlight Text in PowerPoint
2010 for Windows tutorial.
-
Figure 1: Text highlighted within a PowerPoint Slide
- Now, select all or some of the highlighted text, as shown in Figure 2. We selected
some text that had a blue highlight applied (highlighted in
red within Figure 2).
-
Figure 2: Highlighted text is selected
Note: The slide in
Figure 2, above shows only two highlight colors. There are 15
highlight color available in Word 2010 to choose from - make sure that you first get the required highlight color
to PowerPoint and then copy it. There is no way to change the highlight color in PowerPoint. You can access the
Text Highlight Color drop-down menu within Word, as explained in our
Highlight Text in PowerPoint 2010
for Windows tutorial.
- To copy the highlighting, access the Home tab (highlighted in
red within Figure 3) of the
Ribbon and click the
Format Painter button (highlighted in blue within
Figure 3).
-
Figure 3: Format Painter button
- Alternatively, when you
select any text you can see the
Mini Toolbar, as shown in
Figure 4. Within the Mini Toolbar select the Format Painter button,
as shown highlighted in red within Figure 4.
-
Figure 4: Format Painter button within Mini Toolbar
- Either of these options will change the cursor to a Paintbrush icon, as shown
highlighted in red within Figure 5. This indicates that the Format Painter
is active.
-
Figure 5: Cursor after clicking the Format Painter button
- Now, with this changed cursor, just click on a new word to add the highlight to it. In
Figure 6, below, you can see that the first word of the last line is now highlighted in
blue. This was earlier not highlighted (compare with Figure 1, shown
earlier on this page). Remember though that when you use Format Painter for text, you should be
little more cautious compared to when using it for shape and other PowerPoint slide objects. To know the reason,
explore our Copying Text Attributes
with Format Painter in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows tutorial.
-
Figure 6: New text highlighted
Note: If you have more text on the slide or in the entire presentation that needs to be
highlighted with the same color, just double-click the Format Painter button so that it remains
selected. Then keep clicking on other words you want to highlight. To stop highlighting with the
Format Painter button, just press the Esc key or click the
Format Painter button again. To highlight contiguous text, place the Paintbrush icon
cursor just before the starting point of the text, then click and drag the mouse over till the end.
- To remove highlighting from text, first simply select some non-highlighted text on any slide in PowerPoint.
Then, access the Home tab (highlighted in red within
Figure 7) of the Ribbon and
click the Format Painter button (highlighted in blue within
Figure 7). This copies the attributes of non-highlighted text, which is indicated by the cursor
changing into a Paintbrush icon.
-
Figure 7: Non-highlighted text selected
- Now, take this Paintbrush icon cursor over the word you want to remove the
highlighting from, and just click. If you want to remove the highlighting from the contiguous text such as a sentence
or a paragraph, then place the Paintbrush icon cursor just before the starting point of the sentence/paragraph, then
click and drag the mouse over till the end of the sentence/paragraph. In Figure 8, below you can see
that we have removed the highlight from the first paragraph, and also from the word 'virus' in the last line. Both of
them were highlighted earlier (compare to Figure 6, shown earlier on this page).
-
Figure 8: Highlight removed from the text
- Save your presentation often.
