In Verbum, you can highlight text in a resource in the same way you might use a highlighter or colored pencil to mark up printed material. You can even create your own custom styles, view or hide highlights while reading, or run advanced searches based on your highlights.
Looking for how to use highlighting in the mobile app? Visit this page.
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
You can create a highlight from three tools 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.
Note: Click the highlighter icon to open the full highlighting panel if you don’t see your desired style in your most recently-used highlights.
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 Highlight to open the full highlighting panel if you don’t see your desired style in your most recently-used highlights.
3. Highlighting Panel
To open the panel, click the Tools icon and choose Highlighting under the Content section.
Open the Highlighting Tool in Verbum
Note: You can also opening the Highlighting panel from the Selection or Context Menus by clicking the highlighting icon
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.
- Select any highlight.
- 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 on the Palette name, hover over the Notebook menu, and choose a notebook from the list.
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 resource with highlights, expand the visual filters menu and scroll down to the “Notes and Highlights” section. Check or uncheck “Notes and Highlights” to view or hide all highlights.
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. Check “Notes and Highlights (Corresponding)” in another version.
Search Highlights
You can conduct advanced searches for highlighting styles to find a specific highlight. While running a search, click the first parameter (likely “All Bible text”) and check any combination of palettes and styles to limit your search.
Run any search. Only results with your selected highlighting style(s) return.
Additional Resources
Verbum Help: Highlighting