Adding a Little Color

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated May 14, 2020)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003

There may be times when you want your text to appear in different colors. This is particularly helpful for emphasis or for use with a color printer. A very easy way to do this is to use the Font Color tool on the toolbar. If you want, you can make the process even easier by creating your own tool that assigns a single specific color to text. To do this, follow these steps:

Choose Customize from the Tools menu. Word displays the Customize dialog box.
Click on the Commands tab.
Select the All Commands option in the list of Categories. This displays all the Word commands available. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Commands tab of the Customize dialog box.

In the Commands list, choose Color. A Color drop-down list appears near the bottom of the dialog box.
Choose the color you want to use from the Color drop-down list.
In Step 4 you selected the Color option from the Commands list. Click on that option again and drag it to a toolbar (for instance, to the right of the Underline tool on the Formatting toolbar). When you release the mouse button, the new tool appears on the toolbar.
Click on Close to close the Toolbars dialog box.

Now you can select any text desired and then click on the new toolbar button to assign the color to the text.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (258) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Inserting the Saved Date In a Header or Footer

When preparing a worksheet for printing, you may want to include in the header or footer the last date the workbook was ...

Discover More

Scaling Your Printing

If you want to cram more of your worksheet onto each page of a printout, one way to do it is by using scaling. Here's how ...

Discover More

Creating Worksheets from a List of Names

Need to create a large number of worksheets using specific names? If so, you'll love the ideas presented in this tip.

Discover More

The First and Last Word on Word! Bestselling For Dummies author Dan Gookin puts his usual fun and friendly candor back to work to show you how to navigate Word 2019. Spend more time working and less time trying to figure it all out! Check out Word 2019 For Dummies today!

More WordTips (menu)

Using Very Large Font Sizes

You can format your text to use some very, very large font sizes. The results you see from formatting with large fonts ...

Discover More

Creating a Drop Cap

Drop caps can be a nice finishing touch for some types of documents. Word allows you to create three types of drop caps, ...

Discover More

Quickly Decreasing Point Size

A shortcut for decreasing the point size of a font.

Discover More

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

Notify me about new comments ONLY FOR THIS TIP

Notify me about new comments ANYWHERE ON THIS SITE

Hide my email address

What is seven minus 6?

2015-07-28 12:47:28

Joanne

How do I do this in Word 2010???

This Site

Got a version of Word that uses the menu interface (Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, or Word 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Word, visit our WordTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.