Whether you want to highlight a selection of text in order to manipulate it by one means or another (make it bold, italic, a different font or size), or you wish to colour-highlight text in order to draw attention to it, we’re here to help.
To learn the various means of highlighting in Google Docs, simply follow our step-by-step tutorials below. For any additional information, or if you have any other queries, please see our FAQs at the end of this article.
Table of Contents
How to select text by highlighting it in Google Docs
This method is used to select text for manipulation. If you want to learn how to highlight text with colour, skip to the next tutorial.
Method One:
- Open your preferred web browser and launch Google Docs. Open a test document and, if necessary, type in some text to work on.
- Now, to highlight the text, simply click your cursor at the point in the text where you want your selection to start.
- Next, keeping your mouse/trackpad clicked, drag the cursor over the text you wish to highlight, and once you’ve covered all of the text necessary, simply let go of the click.
Method Two:
- Open your preferred web browser and launch Google Docs. Open a test document and, if necessary, type in some text to work on.
- Now, to highlight the text, simply click your cursor at the point in the text where you want your selection to start.
- Next, holding SHIFT on your keyboard, use the LEFT, RIGHT, UP, and DOWN arrows to highlight all of the text you wish to select
Tip: If you’re looking to simply and quickly highlight one word, you can double-click on it; alternatively if you wish to highlight an entire sentence or paragraph, triple-click on any of the words contained within it.
How to highlight text with colour in Google Docs
- Open your preferred web browser and launch Google Docs. Open a test document and, if necessary, type in some text to work on.
- Now, to highlight the text with colour, first select whichever part of the text you wish to highlight using the highlight-selection method(s) described above – either click and drag to select, or use SHIFT and the ARROW keys.
- Once you’ve got your chosen text highlighted, click the ‘Highlighter’ tool along the toolbar at the top of the page. It looks like a physical highlighter, and is situated to the right of the B (bold), I (italic), U (underscore) and A (text colour) tools.
- Now, from the drop-down colour palette, select the colour you’d like to highlight your text with. There are a range of predetermined colours to choose from, but you can also choose a custom colour by clicking ‘Custom (+)’ and then fine-tuning your colour selection. (Press ‘OK’ to select this colour once you’re happy with it.)
And there you have it! By following our tutorials above, you can quickly learn how to highlight text for selection, or with colour, via a couple of different methods.
If you have any other queries, or still have unanswered questions, please direct your attention to our FAQs below.
Frequently asked questions
What does it mean to highlight in Google Docs?
There are two potential meanings behind ‘highlighting’ in Google Docs. We’ll cover both in our tutorials above.
Firstly, and most simply, to highlight may simply mean to select text from your document, thus ‘highlighting’ it for manipulation somehow.
Secondly, to highlight may refer to the ‘highlighter’ tool, which you can use to give the text a coloured background, just like you would with a highlighter pen on a physical document – perhaps you remember doing so in school; we certainly do!
Either way, you’ll need to know how to carry out the first type of highlighting in order to affect the second, and so it’s really useful to know both.
Why would I want to highlight in Google Docs?
Google Docs, the free-to-use, accessible and cloud-based answer to the more industry-standard Microsoft Word, is fast becoming one of the world’s most popular word processing programmes, enjoyed by millions the world over for its functionality, ease-of-use, and compatibility with online sharing platforms.
One of the most impressive and beloved functions of Google Docs is the fact that they can easily and quickly be shared with other Google users, allowing for multiple writers and/or editors to collaborate on the same project.
In such a scenario, highlighting (as we’ve described above) can come in extra handy. By differentiating specific parts of a document, you can quickly isolate those elements created (or marked for editing) by each individual contributor to the document.
Of course, this is but one small example of the multifarious uses ‘highlighting’ in Google Docs can have.
Highlighting in the sense of selecting text is a necessary tool for just about anything. If you want to make some text italic or bold, delete text, cut and paste it, if you want to change its format or make it a title instead of normal text – however you want to edit your text, you’ll first need to know how to highlight it.
And then of course there’s the more literal sense of highlighting so as to give the text a different coloured background. This highlighting method is useful for calling direct attention to any given text and can be most usefully employed when utilised in conjunction with colour coding. For example, red highlights might signify elements of the text for deletion, whilst yellow might mean that these parts need editing, and green that they have been edited and are good to go.
Can I un-highlight something in Google Docs if I change my mind?
You most certainly can. If you’ve selected text, then simply click anywhere on the page to deselect it, and move the cursor to a new position. If you’ve highlighted something in colour, and wish to remove the colour, then simply re-select it by highlighting it with your cursor, and then click on the highlight tool again, and this time select ‘None’ (paint-drop symbol with a slash through it), instead of a colour.
Are there other ways to achieve a similar effect to highlighting in Google Docs?
Certainly. If you find the colour-highlighting method too distracting, but still wish to achieve the same effect, then you can do so by changing the colour of the text (rather than its background) instead.
To do so, simply select-highlight the text in question, and click on the tool to the left of the colour-highlighter tool – the one which looks like an ‘A’ with a bar of colour (default: black) below it. Now, select a new colour for your text from the options available to you.
