Annotate Your Books with Highlights

Note: This feature is available to all users.

Skip ahead to:

• Create a Highlight
• Delete a Highlight
• Create Custom Palettes and Styles
• Manage Your Highlights in the Notes Tool
• View/Hide Highlights
• Search Highlights

Create a Highlight

There are a number of ways that you can create a highlight in Verbum: 

• Selection Menu: the quickest way to highlight any text, but also the most limited.
• Context Menu: contains the same features as the Selection Menu, but also allows you to apply the highlight to your selection or to the entire reference in a Bible.
• Highlighting Panel: contains all possible styles and is the best option if you want to access all highlighting tools.

Note: You can also use Cmd + K (Mac) or Ctrl + K (Windows) to apply your default highlighting style to any selected text or press the H key to apply the last used highlighting style.

1. Selection Menu

To highlight with this method, click and drag to select the text you want to highlight. The Selection Menu will display showing the six styles you’ve used most recently. Click a style and Verbum will apply it to the text you’ve selected.

Click the Highlighting to open the full highlighting panel if you don’t see your desired style in your most recently-used highlights.

Note: If you don't see the menu after selecting text, ensure that Show Selection Menu is enabled in Program Settings.

2. Context Menu

To highlight with this method, right-click your selection to open the Context Menu. With the menu open, choose Selection or Reference (Bibles only) on the left side to display your five most recently-used highlighting styles on the right.

Note: Click Highlighting  to open the full highlighting panel if you don’t see your desired style in your most recently-used highlights.

3. Highlighting Panel

You can open the Highlighting Tool from the Tools Menu.

Open the Highlighting Tool in Verbum

As mentioned above, you can also open the Highlighting panel from the Selection or Context Menus by clicking the highlighting icon. Or you can click Highlighting in the Notes tab of the book you are studying.

By default, the panel contains several categories of highlights: solid colors, emphasis markup, highlighter pens, and inductive/precept. To apply any highlight, select text in a resource and select a style from the panel.

Note: You can assign a keyboard shortcut (0-9 or A-Z) to any style. Click the corresponding command button to the right of the highlight name and choose a shortcut.

Delete a Highlight

You can delete a highlight from the Selection Menu, Context Menu, or Highlighting Panel.

1. Select any highlight.
2. Click the remove highlighting icon in the Selection/Context Menu or click Erase in the Highlighting Panel.

Alternatively, select a highlight and press Shift + ⌘Cmd + K (Mac) or Ctrl + Shift + K (Windows).

Note: If all of the highlighted text range associated with a highlight is selected and erased, the associated highlighting entry in the Notes tool will also be removed if there is no other content associated with the highlight. Highlights with content will remain, but will not have a text (e.g. Bible verse) associated with them. If only a portion of the text range is erased, the highlight will remain and its reference range and the title will be revised accordingly. Learn more about managing highlights in the Notes Tool below.
For example: if highlighting is applied to John 1:1–13, a highlight is added to the Notes tool with that reference range. If the highlighting for verses 6–8 is later erased, a second highlight will be added with the reference range John 1:8–13 and the original note will be changed to John 1:1–5. Content entered in the original note will remain there.

Create Custom Palettes and Styles

You can create your own highlighting palettes and styles in the Highlighting Panel.

Create a custom palette.

Click New palette and provide a descriptive name.

Note: You can also duplicate an existing palette. Right-click on any palette and choose Duplicate from the menu. This will duplicate the entire palette, not just an individual highlighter style.

Create a new style.

Expand the command button next to any palette and choose Add a New Style.

Expand any of the seven highlighting aspects to customize the style. A preview of the style will appear at the top of the panel as you add or remove options. When finished, click Save.

• Font Styling: typeface, color, bold, italics, size, etc.
• Background: color behind the highlight
• Text Effects: add glow, outline, or shadow
• Borders & Lines: customize lines or boxes around the text
• Image: choose an image and set how it interacts with text (the final option in the Image section allows you to set a transparency percentage; this allows you to adjust the translucency of your image in 10% increments)
• Insert Text: add custom text before, after, above, or below your highlight
• Labeling: attach custom labels to categorize any text highlighted for advanced searching based on those custom category or attribute (learn more about labels and how to use them in your searches)

Apply custom styles as you would built-in styles: select text in a resource and apply your new style.

To edit any custom style, expand the command menu and select Edit.

Note: If you want to apply a different style to all highlights in a given style, expand the old style’s command menu , click Restyle annotations, and choose your new desired style from the drop-down menu. All highlights in the old style will move to the new style. You cannot undo this action.

Manage Your Highlights in the Notes Tool

When highlighting is applied to text, a new highlight entry will be added to the Notes tool. All highlights are tagged so you can quickly locate them by filter or search.

You can assign any palette to a specific notebook for more organization. Click the command button (1) on the Palette name, click to open the Notebook menu (2), and choose a notebook from the list (3).

You can create notebooks in the Notes tool (learn more about notebooks).

Note: The organization is not retroactive. In other words, all existing highlights will not show in the assigned notebook, but any future highlights will be added to the assigned notebook.

To add your own notes to any highlight, open the entry and provide your comments. When you remove a highlight, the corresponding note entry will also be removed. If you added a personal note to the highlight, your personal note will remain in your Notes tool without the associated highlight.

View/Hide Highlights

Once you’ve created highlights, you can control how and when they display. While viewing any book with highlights, select the Notes tab, open the Show notes and highlights dropdown and toggle Show note indicators control to view or hide all highlights and notes. 

Note: If you’ve set your highlights to a particular notebook, check or uncheck the notebook to toggle the highlights on or off. (Keep in mind, your highlights may be set to “No Notebook”.)

If you’ve highlighted in a particular Bible, you can still see those highlights in any other version of the Bible. Enable the From other books with corresponding text option at the bottom of the dropdown menu.

Search Highlights

You can search for text (or other data) within highlighting styles. Select the Search menu, specify the highlighting style within which you want to search and enter your search term.

Additional Resources

Verbum Help: Highlighting

Skip ahead to:

• Add a Highlight
• Delete a Highlight
• Assign Highlights to a Notebook
• View or Hide Highlights
• Manage Your Highlights in the Notes Tool

Add a Highlight

To highlight text, tap and immediately drag over your desired text. This applies the most recently used highlighting style to your selection. To change the highlighting style, tap the highlighted text and choose another recently-applied highlighting style.

Note: To see all of your highlighting options, tap the more actions icon  to the right of the highlighting styles. If you prefer to turn off the swipe to highlight option, tap the book's more actions icon on the top right of the screen, select View Settings, and toggle off Swipe to Highlight.

Delete a Highlight

To delete a highlight, tap any highlighted text and select the trashcan icon  in the Insights Panel.

Note: Deleting a highlight also removes the corresponding entry in the Notes tool. Highlights with content (i.e., user-added notes while viewing them in the Notes tool) will remain but will not have a text (e.g. Bible verse) associated with them.

Assign Highlights to a Notebook

When highlighting is applied to text, a new highlight entry will be added to the Notes tool. All highlights are tagged so you can quickly locate them by filter or search. You can further organize your highlights by automatically assigning them to a particular notebook.

1. Tap the More Items Menu .
2. Scroll down and tap Settings.
3. Tap to choose your Notebook for Highlights.

Choose an existing notebook. To create a new notebook for your highlights, open the Notes tool from the More Items Menu , tap Notebooks, and tap  at the top of the screen. Create a new notebook, and then go back to Settings to assign this notebook for highlights. Learn more about the Notes tool in the Verbum mobile app.

The organization is not retroactive. In other words, all existing highlights will not show in the assigned notebook, but any future highlights will be added to the assigned notebook.

Note: If you use the Verbum Desktop application, keep in mind that unless you assign highlighting palettes to this same notebook, this notebook will only contain your mobile highlights. Learn more about highlighting in the Verbum Desktop application.

View or Hide Highlights

Once you’ve created highlights, you can control how and when they display. While viewing any book with highlights:

1. Tap the more actions icon  and select View Settings.
   

   

2. Toggle Show Notes/Highlights.

   

Manage Your Highlights in the Notes Tool

With each new highlight you make, Verbum adds a corresponding entry to the Notes tool. This enables powerful filters and searches to to help you locate specific highlights.

Note: Learn more about using the mobile Notes tool.

Filter to view only highlights.

1. Expand the More Items Menu .
2. Scroll down to the Tools section and tap  Notes.
3. Tap All Notes and select the Filter icon  in the top right.
   
4. Select Highlights under the Type filter.

   

5. Tap Done to view your filtered results.

You can narrow your results further by searching the filtered highlights.

Note: If you have assigned all your highlights to a particular notebook (as show above), you can also view all your highlights by selecting the notebook in the Notes tool.

Customize highlights and add comments.

Tap any highlight in the Notes tool to open the entry.

• Delete highlight: tap  to set a new note icon or change the icon color.
• Change highlighting style: tap  to select a new highlighting style.
• More actions: tap  to access additional settings: delete note, edit tags, and view settings.
• Set Notebook: add the entry to a notebook (or change the current notebook)
• +Add anchor: add an additional reference or quotation as an anchor.
• Take a note: tap and begin typing below to add a personal comment about your highlight.