Unfortunately, wordpress.com does not allow me to automatically redirect you to the new location for this posting or I would have done so. You can read this posting at my my personal blog here: http://www.mihalick.us/how-to-highlight-text-in-yellow-using-apple-mail/ . Thank you for reading. – Jason Mihalick
#1 by Jason on May 10, 2012 - 4:08 pm
brilliant! well done – works for me.
#2 by Joe Johnson on May 27, 2014 - 8:11 pm
Thanks much for doing the work. It works well for me. Brilliant!
#3 by Monna on May 14, 2012 - 9:33 pm
I’ve tried this about five times now step by step to make sure I haven’t missed anything, and it absolutely will NOT save it in the favorites. II can’t figure out why it won’t work for me. Please help!! This is something I use all the time and it’s been driving me crazy not to have this feature in iMail. Thanks.
#4 by jrmihalick on May 14, 2012 - 9:40 pm
Hi Monna. Did you use TextEdit to save the style? One of the mistakes that I made initially was to try to save the style within Apple Mail. I could not get a style to save in Apple Mail. Once I saved the new style in TextEdit, Apple Mail also then had the style available for use.
#5 by Monna on May 14, 2012 - 9:44 pm
Hi. Yes, I did use TextEdit.. I’ve tried everything I can think of . . . it just doesn’t seem to want to save it. I name it, say “Add it to my Favorites” go back to Mail and do what you said and it hasn’t been added.
#6 by jrmihalick on May 14, 2012 - 10:03 pm
The only thing that I can figure is maybe a difference in version Apple Mail. I am running Mac OS X Snow Leapord version 10.6.8 and Apple Mail version 4.5. TextEdit version 1.6.
#7 by Monna on May 14, 2012 - 10:07 pm
Possibly, but seems crazy!! I’m running OSX Lion 10.7.3, Mail 5.2 and TextEdit 1.7. Thank you for your help . . I was prematurely excited!! 🙂
#8 by jrmihalick on May 14, 2012 - 10:11 pm
I will be upgrading to Lion in about a month and I will check it out again then. In the meantime, maybe someone else will try this on Lion and report back to us.
#9 by Ed on May 29, 2012 - 11:28 pm
Tried this trick in Lion (works wonders in Snow Leopard) and have unfortunately run into the same problem as Monna. It saves the style in TextEdit’s favorites, but it doesn’t seem to want to carry over to Mail…
#10 by jrmihalick on May 30, 2012 - 7:06 pm
It appears that this is a known problem in OS X Lion as discussed here: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/29922/removing-favorite-styles-does-not-work-in-lions-textedit
If you know what you are doing, you can try modifying your ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist file and adding the necessary entry yourself. Once I upgrade to Lion, I will post a solution if what I have in mind works.
#11 by Monna on May 30, 2012 - 7:09 pm
Thanks, that would be great!! I look forward to a post soon, as I’m not sure what you suggested is something I can do without detailed instructions.
#12 by taoyun on May 23, 2012 - 1:01 am
Hmm. The highlighting doesn’t seem to work on incoming mail…
#13 by jrmihalick on May 23, 2012 - 1:05 am
It’s working for me. You are viewing the mail as HTML, I assume. Do you have any particulars on which email clients you are using? Apple Mail to both send and receive? I will send you an email with highlighted text from my gmail account. Let me know if it comes through correctly.
#14 by Ivo Stadelmann on June 4, 2014 - 1:36 pm
hi,
I’m running mavericks; how tot proceed to get incoming mails higlighthed?
Thanks for a short reply.
Kind regards,
Ivo Stadelmann
#15 by Monna on May 23, 2012 - 2:50 am
Yes, using HTML, and using Apple Mail for both sending and receiving. From what I understand, this is something that worked with versions before OSX 10.7.4 but no longer works.
#16 by Me In LA on June 20, 2012 - 1:19 am
Awesome! Working in Mail, but I can’t say what version…
Thanks a ton – very creative solution.
SB
#17 by Marc on June 28, 2012 - 8:34 am
This method DOES work in Lion but, strangely enough, you need to copy-paste from Microsoft Word! (even Pages did not work…)
#18 by DPL on July 2, 2012 - 3:09 pm
@ Marc: Can you explain by steps how to do it through MS Word?
Thanks,
DPL
#19 by Suzanne on July 6, 2012 - 12:17 am
Excellent – problem solved! Thanks very much
#20 by Tim on July 15, 2012 - 11:22 pm
In OSX 10.7.4 just find some highlighted text (or if you have Word on your mac, just copy and paste into your email. Then under STYLE> COPY STYLE>highlight what you want to highlight and choose PASTE STYLE. Simple to do yet still too bad one seemingly cannot store this STYLE. At least this is a workaround.
#21 by DPL on July 16, 2012 - 1:57 am
Jason,
What do you mean, “Then under STYLE> COPY STYLE>highlight what you want to highlight and choose PASTE STYLE”? I copied and pasted some yellow highlighted text from Word into Mail as you suggested. It showed up in Mail without the yellow highlight. Copy/Paste style in Mail didn’t do anything. Am I not understanding what you’re saying?
Thanks,
DPL
#22 by DPL on July 16, 2012 - 1:58 am
Sorry, I meant Tim (not Jason).
#23 by koala on September 6, 2012 - 11:24 pm
Thanks a lot. That works.
#24 by AL on September 14, 2012 - 2:48 am
Hi Jason, that was great help indeed. Well done!! thank you and best regards. AL
note: it works under OSX 10.8.1
#25 by AB on September 28, 2012 - 3:37 pm
Solution at the top works for me in Snow Leopard, excellent, thank you.
#26 by qays on November 3, 2012 - 7:54 pm
FYI, this solution does work in Mountain Lion. I’m running 10.8.2 and Mail is Version 6.2 (1499). Thank you soooo much for coming up with this….a very creative and simple fix. A simpler fix would be if Apple would build a highlighting tool into mail!
#27 by James R. King on January 22, 2013 - 11:42 am
This worked VERY well (a little klugey) – but much better that a lot of other ideas I’ve read out here. THANKS for sharing it.
C’mon Apple . . . this is such a basic basic thing; a highlighter . . .
#28 by Ann Bagala on January 31, 2013 - 10:08 pm
Thanks, this worked for me!
#29 by Nancy on February 3, 2013 - 2:21 pm
Many thanks! Brilliant and easy to follow.
#30 by Heather on February 17, 2013 - 7:14 pm
You are awesome! Can’t understand why they don’t have a simple text highlight option. Thanks very much!
#31 by Jacques on February 21, 2013 - 2:48 pm
THANK YOU! This has bugged me for SO LONG. It worked exactly as you described, in 10.8.2.
#32 by Amik on February 22, 2013 - 8:26 pm
10.8.2 here, and it works nicely indeed. Thanks for this little trick, I like using it occasionally….
#33 by Serge on March 5, 2013 - 8:21 pm
Perfect! Thanks. I hope Apple will add this option soon…
#34 by Susan on March 18, 2013 - 9:01 pm
Did you ever figure out how to do this for the OS x 10.7?
#35 by Lion on April 15, 2013 - 11:35 am
Great tip! Thank you
#36 by julie on April 17, 2013 - 10:57 pm
clever!
#37 by Liz on April 18, 2013 - 11:58 pm
i love it when things work. You are awesome. Thanks for posting. After a little effort I got it to work for my iMAC OS X version 10.6.8.
#38 by Rodrigo Blanco on May 15, 2013 - 2:21 pm
OMG! Thank you so much for posting this solution!!!!
#39 by francesco on May 19, 2013 - 11:20 pm
When you receive an email with highlighted text, how do you remove it?
#40 by jrparfitt on January 31, 2014 - 9:37 pm
See my comment below. – Jamie
#41 by Dar on June 7, 2013 - 11:08 pm
Thank you for this great tip and the way you presented it so clear. Perfectly!
#42 by Tony on June 10, 2013 - 8:19 am
Excellent many thanks!
#43 by PK on August 20, 2013 - 11:13 am
Worked wonderfully well for me in Mountain Lion OS. Thanks a lot
PK
#44 by DA on September 5, 2013 - 5:48 pm
Brilliant. I have been trying to do this for ages, and finally a solution. Thank you, thank you…
#45 by Katherine on September 18, 2013 - 1:21 pm
Thank you so much for doing this. I have switched a client to Mac and I was mortified when she asked where the highlight was! Now she has it!!
#46 by gray699 on September 20, 2013 - 4:07 pm
I so appreciate the time and effort you put into describing this process. Very helpful indeed!
#47 by Chad on October 7, 2013 - 8:55 pm
Sweet!
#48 by new2mac on November 4, 2013 - 6:38 pm
Not having this ability was annoying. Thanks a lot. Really helpful.
#49 by Marcia Riefer Johnston on November 6, 2013 - 10:48 pm
Thanks for this tip. Works!
#50 by Collignon Bertrand on November 27, 2013 - 9:03 am
Works for me too. Thanks a lot, was really annoyed by not being able to do it before.
#51 by Rahul on December 4, 2013 - 5:52 am
Thanks a lot for the tip. Works in Mountain Lion. How do I make a keyboard short-cut to this style?
#52 by Jason on January 8, 2014 - 3:37 am
I think this may be possible with Applescripting, but I am still researching it. Sorry that I don’t have any help for you right now.
#53 by Daryl Edwards on December 4, 2013 - 2:36 pm
Surely Apple will fix this but until then, this works great. It also made me aware of how to do several other uses for Styles. Thanks.
#54 by Karen on December 12, 2013 - 9:50 pm
Excellent; thank you so much!
#55 by Macher on January 7, 2014 - 4:50 pm
Really helpful! Been looking for this for ages. Thx much.
#56 by Paul W. Chargois on January 9, 2014 - 7:30 pm
The most brilliant (albeit hassle plagued) highlighting solution I’ve found. Thanks so much for going to this trouble and providing this solution.
#57 by Bee Gilbert on January 17, 2014 - 5:42 am
How about EVERYONE tell Apple…..so we don’t have to go through this silly exercise ….? Hello Apple? Anybody home?
#58 by erinparker75 on January 27, 2014 - 1:42 am
thank you for this!!!!!!!!!! ridiculous that as advanced as apple is they don’t have this simple function on mac mail. you’re a genius!!!!
#59 by Brendon on January 30, 2014 - 9:03 am
Firstly, thank you so much. when I looked at the first post of date was 2012 so I thought Mavericks should have this fixed/added then apparently it is not added as a feature yet or styles is the feature to be used with so many hassle copying some highlight from my colleague’s email then used TEXTEDIT cause I made same mistake using mail.app and it never added style.. haha😀
Thank you so much and apple should reward you!!
#60 by jrparfitt on January 31, 2014 - 9:36 pm
I was so glad to find this solution. I didn’t read all 56 comments above. But I will share my story. I copied an address from a nursing home to email to a friend who wanted to send a card there. The address showed up with a tan highlight or background. I tried to find a highlight button so I could turn OFF highlighting. After following your directions to make a highlighted font, I was able to highlight the whole email. My son was impressed, but I wanted NO highlight. So I selected all the text, right-clicked on it, chose FONT, then STYLES, and clicked DEFAULT. All the highlighting went away.🙂
So that is how to get rid of highlighting if you want to.
Jamie
#61 by Not on February 6, 2014 - 5:19 pm
Thanks! Works perfectly in Mavericks.
#62 by Ron on March 19, 2014 - 12:25 am
Great solution – thank you!
#63 by aakash on March 22, 2014 - 10:13 pm
THANKS BRO … THIS REALLY HELPED… WHY APPLE DIDNT INCORPORATE SUCH A SIMPLE BUT USEFUL THING LIKE THE HIGHLIGHTER IN THE MAIL ITSELF ? JUST LIKE MS OFFICE …ITS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE
#64 by GUY on April 25, 2014 - 11:03 am
ACE! You are a star!
#65 by gbeardsell on May 7, 2014 - 2:48 pm
Works fine and quick. Looking for this trick for a while. Never had time to go to the end. Now did and I wish I had done this before. THANKS.
#66 by zjfmiller@gmail.com on May 16, 2014 - 12:58 am
This method works perfectly in 10.9.2 Mavericks. Love it!
#67 by David on May 21, 2014 - 9:13 pm
You’re a Genius! Thanks a lot.