How to highlight text in Word 2016 using KM

Questions & Suggestions
1

In Word 2016, there is no longer a menu command for highlighting text, only an icon. I would like to use my old KM hot key for highlighting, but it’s not that simple. Here’s what I’ve tried:

  1. Recording a KM macro to click on the highlighter icon. Sounds easy enough. The Problem: The highlighter icon is only visible on the “home” ribbon, so if I’m in “review,” the macro doesn’t work. I could have the macro select the “home” ribbon first, but if I’m already in “home” when I activate the hot key, the ribbon just disappears and again the macro doesn’t work.

  2. Creating a “highlighted” style and having KM apply that style to the selected text. Problem: When you create a font style in Word, from what I can tell it forces you to choose a font size. So if I choose 12-point font for the style, but I’m working in a document with 11-point font, when I apply the style, the font size is wrong. Since I can’t predict the font size in any given document, that’s not really workable.

Any other ideas?

Thanks,
–Bill

2

Bill,

I don't know about Word 2016, but in Word 2011, you can go to Tools > Customize Keyboard, and set a shortcut for any command.

If you're unable to do that, record a short Word macro that applies the highlight, and assign a shortcut to that.

There is also the Mac Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts option, where you can assign a shortcut to any item that appears on any app's menu.

Good luck, and let us know how it goes.

4

Thank you for the suggestion. I did find “highlight” in the customize keyboard options (the reason I didn’t find it originally was because I needed to search for the command in the right category, and my general search of the commands hadn’t brought it up). Thanks again!

5

Hi, I'm glad you found the "highlight" command.

In Word 2011, there is an "All Commands" category that does just that. After choosing that, typing "high" took me directly to the "Highlight" command.

Have they changed that in Word 2016?