Finally – you can Highlight text in PowerPoint

Yes. This feature has been requested for years. There were many workarounds. But no direct solution. Now we can Highlight text in PowerPoint just as we can in Word. Simple toolbar button.

How to get the Highlight text in PowerPoint feature?

Well, this is a part of ongoing updates for the Office 365 version of Office. It is called Office 365 Pro Plus. The benefit of using this version is that new features and bug fixes are automatically updated. This version does not have a traditional version number like Office 2013 or Office 2016 – it is always the latest version.

Of course it has a technical version number. You can see that number by going to File – Account – About PowerPoint. This feature was automatically added few days back for my Office 365 account. The version number is 16.0.7030.1008

If and when your Office copy is auto-updated you will receive this message.

That’s it. Start using Highlight as we do in Word. (No highlighter in Excel, in case you are wondering!). If you want to highlight multiple areas one after another, select the first range and DOUBLE CLICK on the highlighter. Now onwards, just highlight another area.. it gets highlighted automatically.

The native formatting of font is retained.

Unlike in Word, we get Recent Colors as well. That means you can use non-standard highlight colors as well. How to add colors to the Recent Colors area?

Simple. Select some other color using Font color or Fill color or Outline color (either from More colors… or using EyeDropper).

Now that color appears in the Recent colors list. Remember that recent colors area is determined on a per-presentation basis. Recent colors are saved with each presentation separately.

Before you ask, there is no Find Highlighted text option. May be it will come later. I have already submitted it as a wish.

Don’t have this feature? Talk to your IT team. If you have on-premise versions of Office, you will NOT get this feature. Even if you have Office 365 Pro Plus, you will get this feature only after you have enabled First Release feature. (Else you will get this feature many months later).