How to select more highlight colors in Word

If you color-code the text in your Word documents, you may feel constrained by the 15 Highlight Color choices:

Highlight colors

Fortunately, there's another command available if you want to expand your color palette: Shading. The button is not far from the Highlight Color selector on the Word toolbar: It's just about seven spots to the right over in the Paragraph section:

Shading colors

You can use More Colors to select from the expanded Colors dialog:

Standard Colors

Or even enter custom RGB values if you like:

Custom Colors

This feature is available in both Word 2007 and Word 2010.

A couple of small cautions: If you use my tip for hiding highlighter marks, any text with Shading will still be displayed and printed. Also, you'll have to remove Shading separately from Highlighting - simply select your target text and choose No Color for each.

Suzanne