make it possible to change (lighten) WORD highlighter colors

[euonymous]

The issue is that I like to use the highlight feature, but the colors are
generally too dark to enable me to leave the highlighting in place and still
read the document. The pink, green and blue are too dark. I use
highlighting of different colors in client documents to quickly show me items
to discuss, problems, etc. In a paperless office, highlighter colors can be
very useful.

So, please, in some future release of Word, make it possible to change
(lighten) WORD highlighter colors.

Thanks.

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[Stefan Blom]

You could just click "More colors" and choose any color you want (you
can even create custom ones).

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP


in message

The issue is that I like to use the highlight feature, but the colors are
generally too dark to enable me to leave the highlighting in place and still
read the document. The pink, green and blue are too dark. I use
highlighting of different colors in client documents to quickly show me items
to discuss, problems, etc. In a paperless office, highlighter colors can be
very useful.

So, please, in some future release of Word, make it possible to change
(lighten) WORD highlighter colors.

Thanks.

----------------
This post is a suggestion for Microsoft, and Microsoft responds to the
suggestions with the most votes. To vote for this suggestion, click the "I
Agree" button in the message pane. If you do not see the button, follow this
link to open the suggestion in the Microsoft Web-based Newsreader and then
click "I Agree" in the message pane.

http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...f1f35e&dg=microsoft.public.word.docmanagement

 

[euonymous]

Stefan, that's what I'd like to do. The Word 2003 drop down menu for
highlighting has a "none" choice and several colors. There is no option in
my version of Word 2003 to "choose any color you want" or "create custom
ones"... Am I missing something?

 

[Greg Maxey]

No, AFAIK you are not missing anything. The hightlight painter is
unfortunately fixed with the 15 rather odd and generally dark colors.
I think Stefan is referring to Format>Borders and Shading> Shading.
Here you can create your custom colors until the cows come home and
apply it to a selection of text.

Not as handy as the painter, but works.

 

[Greg Maxey]

You could choose you shading color and create a couple of macros to
easily apply and remove it from selected text:

Sub ApplyMyShade()
Dim oRng As Word.Range
Set oRng = Selection.Range
oRng.Shading.BackgroundPatternColor = wdColorLightTurquoise
End Sub

Sub RemoveMyShade()
Dim oRng As Word.Range
Set oRng = Selection.Range
oRng.Shading.BackgroundPatternColor = wdColorAutomatic
End Sub

 

[JoAnn Paules [MVP]]

Darn! I could have used this information on my last job. They have a color
laser printer and even the light highlight colors printed rather dark. I
just figured I'd have to accept that.

Thanks for the helpful info, Greg!

 

[euonymous]

Greg, that is a great idea as a work around. Thanks. I'll make a macro to
do this. I've never been crazy about the way highligting works anyway. I've
always thought that double clicking should turn it on/off. You are
confirming my assumption that there's no way to change the highlighting
colors.

 

[Greg Maxey]

JoAnn,

See:

http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/Highlighter.htm

 

[Stefan Blom]

No, AFAIK you are not missing anything. The hightlight painter is
unfortunately fixed with the 15 rather odd and generally dark colors.
I think Stefan is referring to Format>Borders and Shading> Shading.

Yes, you are right; I was thinking of shading rather than highlighting. I
should have stated this explicitly in my previous message.

Here you can create your custom colors until the cows come home and
apply it to a selection of text.

Not as handy as the painter, but works.

An advantage of shading is of course that it can be added to a character
style, which makes it easy to add and remove the formatting from text.

 

[Bryan]

Yes! We need more (good) highlight colors too. Shading won't work for us, as
we cannot mess with the actual style of the document.

Where can I go to submit an enhancement request to the Word team on this?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Shading can be applied to selected text (like any other direct font
formatting) without affecting the paragraph style.

Yes! We need more (good) highlight colors too. Shading won't work for us, as
we cannot mess with the actual style of the document.

Where can I go to submit an enhancement request to the Word team on this?

http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...f1f35e&dg=microsoft.public.word.docmanagement

 

[Greg Maxey]

See:
http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/Highlighter.htm

 

[Bryan]

Suzanne/Greg --

Thanks for the replies. Yes, from your previous posts I've seen that you can
use character styles to simulate highlighting. However, we want to use true
highlighting for 2 reasons:

#1 -- We are programmatically injecting highlighting into an already
authored document. Thus, the original author could have used character level
formatting and we cannot blast over that (but still need to highlight the
text in a consistent fashion).

#2 -- Viewing highlighting can be turned off in the Word options menu. This
is great for us b/c some users will want it on/off depending on their
preference.

Thus our need for true native highlighting. It doesn't muck w/ any
styles/formatting that might be in the document, and it can easily be turned
off (w/ out having to programmatically navigate the entire doc for character
shading).

Any idea how to formally submit this enhancement request to the Word team?

Thanks!