Copy and Remove Highlighting for Text in PowerPoint 2010

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:

1. 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 tutorial.
   
   
   Figure 1: Text highlighted within a PowerPoint Slide


2. 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 tutorial.
   
   
   
3. 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
   
   
   Tip: Cannot find the Mini Toolbar? Explore our Missing Mini Toolbar in PowerPoint 2010 tutorial to learn more.



4. 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


5. 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 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.
   
   
   
6. 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


7. 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


8. Save your presentation often.

See Also: Copy and Remove Highlighting for Text in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows