How to Easily Highlight Text in Excel Like a Pro

Highlighting text in Excel allows you to visually distinguish certain words, values or ranges of cells. This can help draw attention to important data or make your worksheets easier to read and understand.

While Excel has a built-in highlighting tool it’s not immediately obvious how to use it. In this guide, I’ll show you multiple ways to highlight text in Excel using keyboard shortcuts buttons on the ribbon and more.

Why Highlight Text in Excel?

Here are some common reasons you may want to highlight text in your Excel worksheets

• Emphasize important values or cells – Highlighting brings visual focus to key data like totals, KPIs and final output values. This makes it easier to spot the numbers that matter most in large datasets.

• Clarify inputs and outputs – Highlight input values in one color and output values in another color to differentiate them. This can help explain the flow of calculations.

• Improve readability – Highlighting certain text can break up dense groups of numbers and text, making your spreadsheets less visually overwhelming.

• Categorize or label data – Use different highlight colors to assign categories or labels to certain values. For example, highlight sales figures from different regions in different colors.

• Call attention during presentations – Highlighting important figures, phrases or instructions can help guide your audience when presenting Excel worksheets.

No matter your reason for highlighting, Excel provides multiple quick and easy ways to do it. The key is knowing your highlighting options.

How to Highlight Text in Excel

Here are step-by-step instructions for highlighting text in Excel, using a mouse, keyboard shortcuts or the ribbon:

Using a Mouse

1. Select the cell(s) containing the text you want to highlight.

2. Click the Home tab on the ribbon.

3. In the Font group, click the arrow next to the Text Highlight Color button.

4. Select the highlight color you want to apply.

The selected text will now have a colored highlighting.

To remove the highlighting, simply click the No Color option in the Text Highlight Color menu.

Using Keyboard Shortcuts

1. Select the cell(s) with the text to highlight.

2. Use one of the following shortcut key combinations:

   • Ctrl + Shift + L for red highlighting
   • Ctrl + Shift + N for yellow
   • Ctrl + Shift + M for green
   • Ctrl + Shift + O for blue
   • Ctrl + Shift + P for magenta

3. To remove highlighting, select the cells and press Ctrl + Shift + H.

From the Ribbon

1. Select the cell(s) with text to highlight.

2. On the Home tab, click the Font group arrow to expand it.

3. Click the Text Highlight Color button and pick a color.

4. To remove highlighting, open the Font group again and select No Color.

The ribbon method gives you quick access to all highlight color options in one place.

Highlighting Text Across Multiple Cells

The above steps highlight text within a single selected cell. To highlight text across multiple cells:

1. Select all cells you want to highlight.

2. Drag your cursor across the text you want to highlight.

3. Apply highlighting using any method above.

This lets you selectively highlight text spans that cover more than one cell.

Highlighting Entire Rows or Columns

To highlight an entire row or column:

1. Click the row number or column letter to select the entire row/column.

2. Apply highlighting through the ribbon, keyboard or mouse.

This will highlight the entire row or column including all text and values within it.

Highlighting Text by Format

You can also highlight text that matches a certain format in Excel:

1. Use Ctrl + F to open the Find and Select menu.

2. Click Options to open advanced search options.

3. Click Format and select the formatting you want to highlight, like Font Color or Cell Color.

4. Click Find All to highlight all cells with that formatting.

This lets you quickly highlight all cells that share the same text format.

Additional Highlighting Tips

• Double click the Text Highlight Color button on the ribbon to highlight the selected text in the most recently used color. This provides quick access to reuse colors.

• To highlight every other row or column, select the full range, click Conditional Formatting > New Rule > Format only unique or duplicate values > Duplicate values and pick a fill color.

• Adjust the text highlight transparency under Home > Font > Text Highlight Color > More Colors to make the highlighting less distracting.

• You can only apply one highlight color to a cell at a time. To combine multiple colors, you’ll need to use Excel’s conditional formatting tools.

• Highlight important cells with a bright color, then use pale highlight tones for labels and formatting to avoid visual clutter.

• Highlighting text in Excel has no impact on formulas and calculations. It’s strictly for visual purposes.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are answers to some common questions about highlighting text in Excel:

Can I highlight certain words in a cell?

Yes, once you select the cell, drag your cursor to highlight only the specific words you want instead of the full cell contents.

How do I highlight all cells with a certain word or phrase?

Use Ctrl + F to search for the word/phrase, then click Find All to highlight all matching cells.

How do I highlight blank cells?

Click Home > Editing > Find & Select > Go To Special and select Blanks to highlight all blank cells.

Can I apply multiple highlight colors in one cell?

Unfortunately no. Excel only allows one highlight color per cell. For multi-color highlights, you’ll need conditional formatting.

Is there a built-in highlighter tool I can use?

Yes, under the Review tab you’ll find the New Comment menu with highlighters and text markup tools to annotate your spreadsheet.

Can I highlight rows in Google Sheets?

Yes! The highlighting process works the same way in Google Sheets as in Excel. Select the row number(s) and apply a highlight color.

Get Creative with Highlighting in Excel!

With so many highlighting options, take time to explore different ways to use color and contrast to make your Excel data stand out.

Simple highlighting goes a long way in improving the presentation and readability of dense spreadsheets. Use it intentionally to draw attention, categorize information and simplify data analysis in Excel.

So next time you want to emphasize important values, differentiate labels or just improve the visual layout, don’t forget to highlight! Excel’s formatting tools make it quick and easy to add colored highlights almost anywhere.