How to Highlight Text in an Excel Table in a PowerPoint

If your boss asked you to prepare a power presentation and highlight part of the text in an Excel Table, and you don’t know how,
discover here how to highlight text in an Excel table in a PowerPoint.

It may sound like a very easy thing to do,
however, when you get at it, you realize it is not that easy.
Let’s see and how to do it step by step, why it is important to highlight text in a PowerPoint presentation.

What is the reason for highlighting text in a PowerPoint slide

Draw attention to the key information in a text.
That’s without a doubt,
the main reason why you may want to consider highlighting text in a PowerPoint presentation.

If you need some inspiration on what to include in your PowerPoint presentation, discover how to use chatGPT with AIPRM extension here.

How to highlight your text in PowerPoint

If you want to highlight plain text in PowerPoint is very simple

Open a PowerPoint

Write the text that you want to highlight: for example Mister Paton – how to highlight text in PowerPoint

Select the words you want to highlight – in this case: Mister Paton

Click on Text Highlight Color

And there you have,
your text highlighted inside your PowerPoint slide.

However,
if you want to highlight the text inside an Excel table, it is not that simple, see below how to do it.

Step by step on how to highlight text in an Excel table in a PowerPoint

Step #1 Create the table normally in Excel.
Open an Excel file and create the data based on your needs.

Step #2 Copy the table in Excel (Ctrl + C)

Step #3 Open a PowerPoint

Step #4 Past special the Excel table in PowerPoint

Step #5 Select the second icon from the bottom to keep the format.

This is how your table will look like after clicking on the second bottom:

Step #6 Select the second icon from the bottom to keep the format.

Step #7 Click on the highlight text button

And voilá ,
that's how your Excel table would look with the text highlighted:

Reasons why to highlight text in a PowerPoint.

A few reasons for you to consider, why it would be important to consider highlighting text in your next PowerPoint presentation.

Emphasize key points:
Highlighting text draws the audience's attention to important points or ideas that you want to convey. It is an easy way to help them understand and remember the main message of your presentation.

Improve readability:
Highlighting text can make it easier for the audience to read and understand the content of your slide. By using a different colour or font style, you can make the text stand out and prevent it from blending in with the background.

Create visual interest:
Using highlighting techniques can make your slides more visually appealing and interesting. It can break up blocks of text and add variety to your presentation.

Guide the audience's eye:
By highlighting specific text, you can guide the audience's eye to important information or key takeaways, which will help you in keeping your audience focused and engaged throughout your presentation.

Summarize information:
Using highlighting techniques can help you summarize important information or key points in your presentation. This can make it easier for the audience to remember the main message of your talk.

Supply Chain examples of presentations when you want to highlight text in a PowerPoint

I bring you here the example of PowerPoints presentations where you may want to consider highlighting text in your slides:

Root cause Analysis
You can discover how to perform a Root Cause Analysis here

PDCA overview
What PDCA is about and benefits , here

Scorecard KPIs review
Most important Supply Chain KPIs here

Elements to consider when highlighting text in a PowerPoint.

When highlighting text, there are a few elements to consider while highlighting text:

• Select only the key (real) elements to highlight.
• Avoid highlighting everything.
• Use combinations of colours that are “easy” to read.

I leave you here some combinations of colours, to make it “easy” for the audience to read.

Combination of colours when highlighting text in a PowerPoint.

When choosing colours to highlight text in a slide, it's important to select combinations that are visually appealing and easy to read. Here are some combinations of colours that work well for highlighting text:

Black text on a yellow background:
It is the default combination when you want to highlight a word. It works very well as it creates a high contrast, making the text stand out and easy to read.

White text on a dark blue background:
This is another type of combination that also creates a high contrast and is visually appealing.

Dark blue text on a light blue background:
It is not so common to find in people’s presentations, however it is very easy on the eyes and creates a subtle contrast.

Red text on a light grey background:
If you want, something attention-grabbing and visually appealing, this can be a very good option.

Green text on a light-yellow background:
For something soft and easy to read, this can be an easy and simple combination.

Orange text on a light blue background:
This combination is visually striking and can help draw attention to important points.

In a nutshell, remember to keep the text legible and the colours easy on the eyes, while still creating a contrast that highlights the text effectively.

FAQ How to highlight text in an Excel table in a powerpoint.

Some of the general questions that are normally asked about highlighting text in a PowerPoint

How do you highlight text in a box in PowerPoint?

You highlight text in a box in PowerPoint, by selecting the text, and clicking Text Highlight Colour (you can find it under the area Font) within the Home Ribbon

Can you highlight the text in Excel?

No, you can’t. You can only highlight text in Word or PowerPoint. If you want to highlight data in an Excel to show in a PowerPoint copy the table into a slide, keep the format, select the text, and click on Text Highlight Color (you can find it under the area Font) within the Home Ribbon

How do you select text in PowerPoint?

It is very simple. You only need to click with your mouse where you want your selection to start (left mouse button) and drag the arrow over the text that you want to select. With this action, you will be able to easily select the text in PowerPoint