How to Highlight Text in PowerPoint (and Remove It)

To highlight text in PowerPoint, select the words and choose a color from Home > Font > Text Highlight Color. To remove it, select the same words and pick No Color from that menu. The highlight paints a band behind the characters, like a marker on paper, without changing the letters. One yellow band on the right number pulls every eye in the meeting to it. The trouble starts when a deck passes through several hands: four shades of yellow, highlights on whole sentences, and a few left on figures that have since changed. Below are the steps to add, change and remove highlights, the workarounds when the button is missing, and a routine for bringing a shared deck back to one rule.

Highlight vs. Font Color vs. Shape Fill

Three different controls can color text on a slide, and each behaves differently when the text changes. Knowing which one was used tells you how to remove it.

On the ribbon, Text Highlight Color is the marker icon with a colored bar, sitting just left of Font Color (the letter A with a red bar). The two are easy to mix up. If your letters turned yellow instead of getting a band behind them, you clicked Font Color.

How to Highlight Text

Highlight one phrase

Microsoft's Highlight your text article lists three steps:

1. Select the text you want to highlight. Clicking a placeholder border selects the whole box, so every character in it gets highlighted.
2. On the Home tab, select the arrow next to Text Highlight Color.
3. Pick a color. The selected text is highlighted in that color.

Clicking the button itself, rather than the arrow, applies the last color you used. If only a blinking cursor is in the box and nothing is selected, clicking the button does nothing visible.

Highlight several separate phrases

You don't need to select and click five times to mark five figures on a table slide. With nothing selected, open the Text Highlight Color arrow and pick a color. The pointer turns into a highlighter. Drag across each phrase in turn, then press Esc to turn the highlighter off. It works like a real marker and is the fastest way to flag figures scattered across a slide.

Change or Remove a Highlight

Select highlighted text and pick a different swatch to overwrite it. To remove only the highlight, select the text, open the Text Highlight Color arrow and choose No Color. Bold, size and font color stay exactly as they were.

Clear All Formatting in the Font group is the heavier tool. It strips the highlight along with bold, size, font color and every other character setting, which is how a title loses its formatting when someone only meant to remove a yellow band. For a highlight you just added, Ctrl+Z is quickest.

When the Highlight Button Is Missing

According to the requirements section of Microsoft's article, Text Highlight Color is available on Windows in PowerPoint for Microsoft 365 (Current Channel version 1606 or later, Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel version 1701 or later) and in PowerPoint 2019, 2021 and 2024. On a Mac it needs PowerPoint for Microsoft 365 for Mac version 16.10 or later, or PowerPoint 2021 or 2024 for Mac. PowerPoint for the web has it too. A perpetual PowerPoint 2016 license doesn't, and you can check your version under File > Account > About PowerPoint.

If your version qualifies and the button still isn't there, the window is probably too narrow and the Font group has collapsed. Maximize the window. Where the button genuinely isn't available, use one of these:

• Shape Fill in the Drawing group colors the whole box. To emphasize one line, move that line into its own text box and fill it.

• The Draw tab highlighter adds ink on top of the slide. It isn't text formatting, so if the sentence is edited or resized, the ink stays where it was. Keep it for quick marks right before a meeting.

• The Font dialog (Ctrl+T) lets you combine an underline style with an underline color. A thick colored underline reads well even on dark backgrounds.

Text pasted as a picture isn't text, so no version can highlight it.

👉 Slide Master in PowerPoint: How to Edit and Use It

Rules for Highlights That Work

Emphasis gets weaker the more of it there is. Once a slide has more than three or four highlights, the audience can't tell what to look at first. These rules hold up well in business decks:

• One or two highlights per slide, two colors per deck. Give each color a fixed meaning, such as yellow for key figures and pink for items that need attention, and people read them faster with every slide.
• Highlight the figure, not the sentence. In "Sales down 12% year over year," the part to mark is "down 12%." A highlighted sentence stops looking like emphasis and starts looking like a background.
• Don't rely on color alone. Microsoft's guide to making PowerPoint presentations accessible warns that people who are blind, have low vision or are colorblind can miss meaning carried only by color. Pair a highlight with bold on the numbers that matter, and the emphasis survives a black-and-white printout.
• Check contrast on dark templates. White text on a yellow band is nearly unreadable. On dark slides, switch the highlighted words to black or use a bright underline instead. Review > Check Accessibility flags text with too little contrast.

Highlighting During a Presentation

Text Highlight Color is formatting you set before the meeting. To point at a number someone just asked about, use the slide show pointer tools. Microsoft's shortcuts for delivering presentations list Ctrl+L for the laser pointer, Ctrl+P for the pen, Ctrl+A to return to the arrow, and E to erase annotations on the screen. For a highlighter, right-click the slide show and choose Pointer Options > Highlighter.

Marks made during the show are ink. When you end the show, PowerPoint asks whether to keep them. Kept ink becomes objects on the original slides and drifts away from the text after the next edit, so discard it unless you need a record of the meeting.

Worked Example: Cleaning Up a Monthly Sales Review

A sales manager at Crestview Foods, a regional food distributor, prepares the monthly review for the owner. Four reps built their own slides, so the deck now has several near-yellows, a green, and one rep who colored the figure cells with Shape Fill instead of highlighting them. The convention is yellow for key figures, pink for late deliveries and items below safety stock, and nothing else.

1. Find every highlight. Page through the deck and note each slide with emphasis, and whether it's a text highlight, Shape Fill or Draw tab ink. Ink selects separately from the text box, which makes it easy to spot.
2. Clear what the rule doesn't cover. Select those highlights and choose No Color. Avoid Clear All Formatting, which would also undo the bold on customer names.
3. Standardize the colors. Apply standard yellow to one key figure, press Ctrl+Shift+C to copy its formatting, and paste it onto the other key figures with Ctrl+Shift+V. Picking from the palette each time is how near-yellows creep in.
4. Convert the fake highlights. Set the Shape Fill cells back to No Fill and give the figure inside a text highlight. Delete the ink marks.
5. Trim sentence-length highlights. If "Northgate Supply order delayed 3 days, carrier rebooked with Interstate Freight Lines" is all pink, keep the pink on "delayed 3 days" only.
6. Check the figures. Highlighted numbers are the ones the owner asks about first. If the sales workbook was updated after the slides were built, compare each highlighted figure with the latest value, and drop the highlight on any figure that's now on target.
7. Preview the handout. If the review is printed in black and white, switch to View > Grayscale. A dark pink can turn into a gray band that covers the text; lighten it or use a bold underline.

Steps 1, 5 and 6 take the most time on a forty-slide deck: finding every highlight, deciding how much of each sentence to keep, and checking numbers one by one.

FAQ

Q. Why don't I see the Text Highlight Color button?

A perpetual PowerPoint 2016 license doesn't include it. Microsoft 365, PowerPoint 2019 and later, and PowerPoint for the web do. If your version qualifies, widen the window so the Font group expands.

Q. How do I remove a highlight without losing other formatting?

Select the text and choose No Color from the Text Highlight Color arrow. Clear All Formatting resets bold, size and font color as well.

Q. Can I highlight several places at once?

Yes. With nothing selected, choose a color from the Text Highlight Color arrow; the pointer becomes a highlighter. Drag across each phrase and press Esc when you're done.

Q. Do highlights show in slide show and PDF?

Yes. A text highlight is character formatting, so it appears in slide show and in a PDF export. In a black-and-white printout it turns gray, so preview with Grayscale first.

Consistent Emphasis with inline AI

Highlighting one phrase is quick; bringing a forty-slide deck that four people edited back to one rule means opening every slide. In inline AI, you keep the deck and the sales workbook open and say "keep yellow on key figures and pink on late deliveries, clear everything else," and inline AI applies the rule across the deck and flags highlighted figures that no longer match the workbook.