One of the easiest ways to engage your audience when creating PowerPoint presentations is to use the highlighter tool. It’s a simple and yet effective way to direct (and even recapture) the audience’s attention to what you’re trying to emphasise. There are two ways to go about it: while editing or during the presentation delivery.
With PowerPoint you can highlight any piece of text in your presentation directly and draw the viewers’ attention to your key messages.
Anyways, for the purposes of this short article, we’ll show you how to highlight text in PowerPoint in a couple of easy steps.
Highlight text when editing
OPTION 1
1. Open your PowerPoint presentation.
2. Select the piece of text you want to highlight and then click the Text Highlight Color option in the ribbon.
3. From there you can select a highlight colour.
You can also do that if you right-click the selected area and pick a highlight option from the dropdown that will appear on your screen.
To undo the highlight, select the text again and click on the No color option from Text Highlight tab.
OPTION 2
You can also use shapes to highlight a specific piece of information. This is how we proceeded with this presentation as highlighting via shapes gives you more flexibility with the colours.
1. Click Insert > Shape and then select the shape you want.
2. Choose a highlight colour from the Shape fill option.
3. Finally click on the Send Backward option on the ribbon, so that the shape does not cover the text. And that’s it.
Highlight text when presenting
Like we said in the beginning, using the highlighter while delivering a presentation is good way to retain the audience’s attention. It’s like drawing on your screen and doesn’t look as sharp as the above-mentioned techniques but does a brilliant job at re-engaging the viewers.
1. Open the presentation and enter Presenter view.
2. Press Ctrl + L to enable the highlighter tool while presenting.
3. Right-click to bring up the highlighting options.
4. Pick the Highlighter and then draw on your slide to put emphasis on what you’re saying.
5. When you end the slide show PowerPoint will ask you if you want to keep the changes you’ve made.
This is how to easily highlight in PowerPoint and make a piece of information stand out. If you’re curious about more PowerPoint tips and tricks, make sure you follow our blog where you’ll find extensive information on anything presentation related. And because we know you love things that make your life easier, here’s our free PowerPoint Shortcuts cheat sheet.
Let us know if this was helpful in the comments below! ⇩
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