You probably know that you can highlight text in Scrivener using your choice of colors. Big deal, right? Any decent word processor offers that. But did you know that you can also search by color, and rename the colors to something more meaningful for how you use them?
If not, then read on.
Just in case you don’t know already, here’s how to highlight text in Scrivener with one of the standard highlighter colors (or one of your own choosing).
- Select the text you want to highlight.
- Go to Format–>Highlight, and then choose the color from the submenu.
Now on to the really cool stuff. I know several people who mark up their paper drafts with highlighters. Why? One does it for items such as dialogue, emotion, conflict, and setting. Another marks each character’s dialogue so he can track it through the whole MS and make sure it’s consistent. Still another uses it to mark areas that need research or revision (much like we did with annotations).
You are only limited by your imagination here. Once you’ve marked up your draft, you can use the Find Highlight function to search for all highlighted text, or one color.
- Go to Edit–>Find–>Find By Formatting.
- In the Find drop-down menu, select Highlighted Text.
- To search for only one color, check the box next to Limit Search To Color, then click the color box to choose the desired color.
- Click Next (or Previous if you want to go backwards).
- Scrivener will take you to the next instance of the chosen color(s) in your MS.
- You can edit or read the text and then click Next again to move to the next instance, without closing the Highlights Finder dialog box.
If you’d like the change the color names to something more meaningful, you can do that too (currently Mac only).
- Go to Format–>Highlight–>Show Colors.
- Select the color label (double click) and type your own label.
- The new labels will show up in the Highlight submenu of the Format menu.
I hope you found this as cool as I did. If you need more help, check out my book, or one of my upcoming online courses.
Happy highlighting!
[updated 7/31/14]
Gwen Hernandez 
May 18, 2010 at 10:00 PM
Thank god, I’ve been waiting for this!!!
Oh wait, what the hell is a scrivener?
May 18, 2010 at 10:03 PM
LOL. Only the most awesome writing software ever created, silly. 😉
May 18, 2010 at 10:06 PM
Oh, there you go. I’m not a writer. I just dictate my blog to a monkey who pounds out the keys. I also yell obscenities at the monkey as well. It’s all good, he or she gets a banana regardless.
May 18, 2010 at 10:13 PM
Well, maybe if you have a Mac, you should get Scrivener for yourself and then you could participate meaningfully in these discussions. 😀
Although, I think working with the monkey might even be more fun. And who doesn’t like bananas?
May 18, 2010 at 10:23 PM
Of course I have a MAC, is there anything else? Hell it’s so easy even a monkey could use it.
I don’t need shiver or whatever the hell that is, I’ll leave that for you real writers. But I do get paid to write, hmm maybe I am a stud writer after all.
May 19, 2010 at 8:00 AM
I’m sensing that you’re into monkeys. Yes? And, yes, you are actually getting paid to write which is something most of us are only dreaming about at this point. Thanks for rubbing it in, Rich. 😉
May 19, 2010 at 9:00 AM
This is to easy. My guess is he get’s paid in peanuts.
May 19, 2010 at 6:55 AM
Oh, I LOVE THIS! My handy dandy highlight sheet for my final read through of the pivotal scenes is going into the Scrivener program.
You rock!
May 19, 2010 at 7:56 AM
Christine, I thought of you when I was writing this. Thanks!
May 19, 2010 at 6:57 AM
Gwen, you make writing so pleasant!!! thanks for all the tips!
I am going to write my memoir one day and I will use all your tips.
Thank you!
Mirella
May 19, 2010 at 7:57 AM
Thanks, Mirella. I’ll bet your memoir would be fascinating!
May 19, 2010 at 7:35 AM
Love this, Gwen–thanks for the reminder. I have actually used the highlighters this way in the past but forgot I could do this. Will come in very handy. 🙂
May 19, 2010 at 7:58 AM
No problem, Zoe. There are so many handy features in Scrivener. Playing around with them for the TT series helps me find/remember them. Thanks for stopping in!
May 19, 2010 at 9:04 AM
Gwen thank you. I would have never taken the time to sort this one out.
Also, Instapaper is great. Handy as it can be.
May 19, 2010 at 9:21 AM
Hey, Curtis. Glad it’s helpful. Anything else you want to know about that I haven’t covered? 😉
And yes, Instapaper is turning out to be a real timesaver, as is Evernote. I’m always happy to share things that make life easier.
May 25, 2010 at 7:44 PM
Thank you for the info! I’m (very) new to writing, and while I have Scrivner (and love it!) I don’t always know the handy ways it can be used.
May 25, 2010 at 9:33 PM
Absolutely, topspinyarn. I’m always glad to help a fellow writer and Scrivener fan. Good luck with the writing!
July 3, 2010 at 7:11 AM
Fabulous idea. I have used and loved Scrivener for a couple of years now, but I know I’ve barely scratched the surface on what it will do. I retweeted this.
July 3, 2010 at 10:59 PM
Pooks: I’m glad this post helped you, and thanks for the retweet!
October 3, 2010 at 11:39 PM
Hey Gwen —
Every now and then I take a look at the Scrivener Keywords feature, but I can’t figure out how to use it. Doubtless there’s something pretty simple that I’m missing. How ’bout a Tech Tuesday on that.
–Thanks, Mark
October 4, 2010 at 6:20 AM
Thanks for the suggestion, Mark. I’ll see if I can whip something up for this coming Tuesday. Thanks for stopping in!
October 6, 2012 at 5:11 PM
Is there a way to select, say, a paragraph in Scrivener using a keyboard shortcut (function key, two-key combo, etc.)?
October 6, 2012 at 10:43 PM
Jeff: Scrivener works with the standard keyboard shortcuts for the platform you’re on. To select, you can use the standard shortcuts for navigating, but add the Shift key. Below are a couple of good resources for this by platform.
Mac:
PC:
http://www.howtogeek.com/115664/42-text-editing-keyboard-shortcuts-that-work-almost-everywhere/
October 8, 2012 at 1:12 PM
Thank you for taking the time and effort to respond, and for the keyboard shortcut list. I’m on a MacBook Air and, as I suspected, there doesn’t appear to be a shortcut for selecting a paragraph. I was hoping Scrivener would supply one. (Open Office Writer has one as a macro that you can assign to a function key.) Still, even from my brief time playing with it it seems like a fantastic piece of software, just what I’ve been looking for to make novel writing more efficient.
Thanks again for the response.
Best,
Jeff
October 8, 2012 at 1:14 PM
P.S. I was looking for that function as a way to easily do a word count on a paragraph without having to select via the trackpad.
October 8, 2012 at 6:04 PM
Jeff: Yeah, sorry, no simple paragraph selection option. I kind of miss the Command+click for sentences too. 😉
May 29, 2014 at 5:04 PM
Ok, it took me two years (and an accident) to figure it out… but on a Mac (my Air, at least) you can hit Shift-Option-down_arrow and it will highlight the paragraph, if your cursor is at the first character to begin with.
May 29, 2014 at 9:21 PM
Thanks for sharing! I’ve since found that too. Maybe it’s new with the newer OS. That or I just didn’t know where to look. It’s on this list: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1343?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US. 🙂
January 12, 2013 at 1:13 PM
Great article, I noticed you have keyboard shortcuts for each color highlighter. Can you tell me how to add those, I can’t seem to find it! Thanks.
January 13, 2013 at 7:28 PM
Kris: It looks like they’ve since gotten rid of them, though you can create your own. Here’s the link to where it’s discussed in the forum. Does a better job of explaining it all than I could here. 🙂 http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=8997&p=72667&hilit=highlighter+shortcuts#p72667
February 6, 2013 at 6:26 PM
I can’t find the find highlight option.
February 7, 2013 at 10:21 AM
Haydee: It should be under the Format menu. What are you trying to do?
July 27, 2014 at 5:09 PM
Hi Gwen, how can I change the names of the highlights to meet the names of the keywords? Thanks in advance 🙂
July 31, 2014 at 9:59 AM
Dan: Currently, changing the color names is Mac only. If you have a Mac, you can do the following (I updated the post to reflect the new procedures).
1. Go to Format–>Highlight–>Show Colors.
2. Select the color label (double click) and type your own label.
3. The new labels will show up in the Highlight submenu of the Format menu.
Hope that helps!