How to Find and Replace Text Color in Excel

In this post, we will show you how to find and replace Text Color in Excel. Text color, also known as the forecolor, is the color in which the text is displayed in Microsoft Excel. By default, this is set to Black. You can manually change the text color for part of the text or the entire text in your Excel data using the Font Color option. In some cases, the data may contain multiple occurrences of the same text whose color needs to be changed. If your Excel file is quite large, changing the forecolor manually will be tiresome and time-consuming. In this post, we will show you how to use the ‘Find and Replace’ feature to change text color in Excel.

How to Find and Replace Text Color in Excel

Find and Replace is a useful feature in the Office suite programs which allows replacing an existing text with a new text. However, it can also be used to find and replace the color of the text. You may use this feature to change the forecolor one by one for each occurrence of the text, or use Replace All to update the forecolor in one go. Let us understand this with the help of an example.

Suppose we have a worksheet wherein we have a table that lists down the post titles and the author names for posts published on TheWindowsClub on a particular day (see the above image). Now let’s say we want to change the text color for the name of a particular author ‘Guru Mandadi’, who has contributed the most on that day.

We may do this manually as follows:

1. Select the first occurrence of ‘Guru Mandadi’ by placing the cursor in cell C1.
2. Press and hold the Ctrl button on the keyboard and click on all other occurrences of ‘Guru Mandadi’ one by one.
3. Click on the Font Color dropdown within the Font toolbar at the top.
4. Click on the color that should replace the existing forecolor.

Use Find and Replace to change the text color in Excel

While this may seem simple and easy, manually changing the forecolor may not be the ideal approach for larger databases where the text may appear hundreds or thousands of times at different locations in the spreadsheet. In such scenarios, you may use the Find and Replace feature. For the above example, this works as follows:

1. Select the cell range where the text color needs to be replaced. If it is the entire spreadsheet, do not select anything.
2. Click on the Find and Select dropdown within the Editing toolbar in the top-right corner.
3. Click on the Replace option.
4. In the Find and Replace dialogue box, click on the Options button. This will expand the dialogue box and show advanced options.
5. Type the text in the Find what field. For the above example, we have entered ‘Guru Mandadi’ in this field.
6. Click on the Format dropdown next to the Replace with field.
7. Select the Format option.
8. In the Replace Format dialogue box, click on the Color dropdown and select the color that should replace the existing color of the specified text.
9. Click on the OK button.
10. Click on the Replace All button in the Find and Replace dialogue box to apply the new color to the text.

Excel will alert you with the number of replacements made in the entire sheet or the selected cell range.

Note: You may also use other formatting options available within the Replace Format dialogue box to change the appearance of your text, such as its font style, size, etc.

Also Read: How to change the color of the Excel worksheet Tab.

If you want, you may preview the text occurrences one by one and replace the forecolor using the Find Next and Replace options. Here’s how:

• Follow steps 1-9 as described above.
• In the Find and Replace dialogue box, click on the Find Next button.
• Mouse focus will appear on the first occurrence of the specified text.
• To change the forecolor, click on the Replace option. Else, don’t click anything.
• Again, click on the Find Next button.
• Mouse focus will appear on the next occurrence of the specified text.
• Click on Replace to replace the text color.
• Repeat this process until you have made as many text color replacements as you want.

This winds up with how to find and replace text color in Excel.

How do I find and highlight text in Excel?

Press Ctrl+F to open the Find and Replace Dialogue box. Switch to the Replace tab. Click on the Options button. Type the desired text in the Find what field. Select the Format option from the Format menu next to the Replace with field. Switch to the Fill tab in the Replace Format dialogue box. Select a color from the Background Color palette and click on OK. Click on the Replace All button to highlight all the occurrences of the specified text.

Read Next: Change cell background color in Excel with VBA Editor.