Word colors in different colors

Word provides a highlighter tool that allows you to…well, «highlight» text, much as you would do with a highlighter pen on a printed document. The default color for highlighting is yellow, but you can change the color if you click the down-arrow to the right of the Highlight tool on the Formatting toolbar. Word allows you to pick any of fifteen different colors.

The colors used for highlighting cannot be changed beyond what is offered in the fifteen colors. (The colors appear to be hard-wired into Word.) You can, however, highlight text in a different way, if you prefer: by using shading. Follow these steps:

1. Select the text you want to highlight.
2. Choose Borders and Shading from the Format menu. Word displays the Borders and Shading dialog box.
3. Make sure the Shading tab is displayed. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Shading tab of the Borders and Shading dialog box.

4. From the colors displayed, select the one you want to use. (If you’d like to choose from more colors, click the More Colors button.)
5. Click OK.

Word then applies the selected color to the selected text, and it looks exactly like what you apply using the Highlight tool. If you find a color you like to use a lot, you can create a macro that applies the shading to the selected text. The following macro applies pale yellow shading to the selected text.

Sub HighlightPaleYellow()
    With Selection.Font
        With .Shading
            .Texture = wdTextureNone
            .ForegroundPatternColor = wdColorAutomatic
            .BackgroundPatternColor = wdColorLightYellow
        End With
    End With
End Sub

With the macro in place, you can assign it to a shortcut key or to a toolbar button so you can apply your own «highlighting» whenever you want. Or, if you prefer, you can bypass macros altogether and simply create a character style that applies the desired shading to selected text.

There is only one downside that I can find to using shading to highlight text, and that has to do with Find and Replace. One of the formatting attributes that you can search for is if the text is highlighted, but you cannot search for shading applied to text. If this is a big concern for you, then I’d suggest defining styles for your shading, since you can always search for specific styles.

Author Bio

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…

Given the requirements:

1) A User inserts some text in a RichTextBox Control.
2) If the word entered is part of a pre-defined list of words, that word should change color (so, define a relation between a word and a color).
3) When a mouse Click event is generated on a colored word, an event is raised, to notify which word was clicked.

Possible result (to replicate what’s in the visual example):

Define a custom EventHandler with custom EventArgs:

public class WordsEventArgs : EventArgs
{
    private string m_word;
    public WordsEventArgs(string word) { m_word = word; }
    public string Word { get { return m_word; } set { m_word = value; } }
}

public delegate void WordsEventHandler(object sender, WordsEventArgs e);
public event WordsEventHandler WordClicked;

protected void OnWordClicked(WordsEventArgs e) => WordClicked?.Invoke(this, e);

Subscribe to the event:

this.WordClicked += new WordsEventHandler(this.Word_Click);

Simple Class for the list of words:

public class ColoredWord
{
    public string Word { get; set; }
    public Color WordColor { get; set; }
}

public List<ColoredWord> ColoredWords = new List<ColoredWord>();

Fill the list with some words an related color, then bind it to a ListBox, calling the FillColoredWords() method (in other words, handle a collection of objects that relate pieces of text with Color values):

public void FillColoredWords()
{
    ColoredWords.Add(new ColoredWord { Word = "SIMPLE", WordColor = Color.Goldenrod });
    ColoredWords.Add(new ColoredWord { Word = "COLORED", WordColor = Color.Salmon });
    ColoredWords.Add(new ColoredWord { Word = "TEXT", WordColor = Color.DarkCyan });
    this.listBox1.DisplayMember = "Word";
    this.listBox1.DataSource = ColoredWords;
}

In the KeyPress event, evaluate whether the last entered word is part of the list of words to color:

private void richTextBox1_KeyPress(object sender, KeyPressEventArgs e)
{
    int currentPosition = richTextBox1.SelectionStart;

    if (e.KeyChar == (char)Keys.Space && currentPosition > 0 && richTextBox1.Text.Length > 1) {
        int lastSpacePos = richTextBox1.Text.LastIndexOf((char)Keys.Space, currentPosition - 1);
        lastSpacePos = lastSpacePos > -1 ? lastSpacePos + 1 : 0;

        string lastWord = richTextBox1.Text.Substring(lastSpacePos, currentPosition - (lastSpacePos));
        ColoredWord result = ColoredWords.FirstOrDefault(s => s.Word == lastWord.ToUpper());

        richTextBox1.Select(lastSpacePos, currentPosition - lastSpacePos);
        if (result != null) {
            if (richTextBox1.SelectionColor != result.WordColor) { 
                richTextBox1.SelectionColor = result.WordColor;
            }
        }
        else {
            if (richTextBox1.SelectionColor != richTextBox1.ForeColor) { 
                richTextBox1.SelectionColor = richTextBox1.ForeColor;
            }
        }
        richTextBox1.SelectionStart = currentPosition;
        richTextBox1.SelectionLength = 0;
        richTextBox1.SelectionColor = richTextBox1.ForeColor;
    }
}

In the MouseClick event, verify whether the event is generated on a colored word.
In that case, raise the custom OnWordClicked() event:

private void richTextBox1_MouseClick(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
    if (richTextBox1.SelectionColor.ToArgb() != richTextBox1.ForeColor.ToArgb()) {
        try {
            int wordInit = richTextBox1.Text.LastIndexOf((char)32, richTextBox1.SelectionStart);
            wordInit = wordInit > -1 ? wordInit : 0;
            int wordEnd = richTextBox1.Text.IndexOf((char)32, richTextBox1.SelectionStart);
            string wordClicked = richTextBox1.Text.Substring(wordInit, wordEnd - wordInit) + Environment.NewLine;
            OnWordClicked(new WordsEventArgs(wordClicked));
        }
        catch (Exception) {
            //Handle a fast DoubleClick: RTB is a bit dumb.
            //Handle a word auto-selection that changes the `.SelectionStart` value
        }
    }
}

In the custom event, you can append the clicked word to a TextBox (or do whatever else you want to do with it):

private void Word_Click(object sender, WordsEventArgs e)
{
    textBox1.AppendText(e.Word);
}